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BAY 6 3 Loo no aL 926 
Interdenominational student 
conference (1925 Dec. 29 : 
Youth looks at the church 




















‘YOUTH LOOKS 
AT THE CHURCH 


ADDRESSES, QUESTIONS, DISCUSSIONS 
AND FINDINGS 


NATIONAL INTERDENOMINATIONAL STUDENT 
CONFERENCE 


REO ILLINOIS 


Introduction by 
STANLEY HIGH 








THE ABINGDON PRESS 
New Yor« CINCINNATI 


Copyright, 1926, by 
THE ABINGDON PRESS, INC. 


Ali rights reserved, including that of translation inte 
foreign languages, including the Scandinavian 


Printed in the United States of America 


First Edition Printed February, 1926 
Reprinted March, 1926 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


PIWERODUCTION! foo iiatvadetinsdescmiesuwesSmeugue ° 
OUR UNITY OF PURPOSE IN THE CHURCH....... 13 


TUESDAY EVENING SESSION 
Speakers: 
Miss Dorothy Gray 
John H. Elliott 
Dr. Halford E. Luccock 


A LOOK AT THE CHURCH—AN APPRECIATION.. 38 


WEDNESDAY MORNING SESSION 
Speakers: 
Georgianna Mackay 
John Knox 
E. BE. Witcraft 
Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr 


A LOOK AT THE CHURCH: A STUDY OF THE 
OPPORTUNITY AND THE INDIFFERENCE OF 
THE CHURCH ..... mais Aik wie/piee bias cceccccesccccee OG 


WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON SESSION 
Speakers: 
Stanley Dowley 
Miss Mattie Julian 
Dr. Hubert Herring 


WEDNESDAY EVENING SESSION 
Speakers: 
Howard Becker 
Dr. R. E. Diffendorfer 


CHRISTIANIZING OUR CIVILIZATION ..0+sse0002+ 87 


THURSDAY MORNING SESSION 
Speakers: 
Harold Ehrensperger 
Roy Burt 
Marian Warner 
Robert Weston 


4. | CONTENTS 


THE FOREIGN MISSION PROGRAM OF THE 
CHURCH adil a ite etal Ele is aYal Wlelei eve wiefa acetic wie(h sip 6 oretae sana 


THURSDAY AFTERNOON SESSION 
Speakers: 
R. A. Doan 
J. Levering Evans 
Y. T. Wu 
Rachel Childrey 


THURSDAY EVENING SESSION 
Speakers: 
Thomas Que Harrison 
Howard McCluskey 
Dr. Ashby Jones 


THE COOPERATIVE WORK OF THE CHURCHES. .138 


Fripay MORNING SESSION 


Mr. J. C. Torrance—Greetings from the United Church 
of Canada 

REPORT OF STUDENT COMMISSION ON THE COOPERATIVE 
WORK. OF THE CHURCHES |... 0.00 seo ceswecee cuwleueee 


Speakers: 

George EH. McCracken 

W. D. Matthias 

James Woodruff 

Gordon EH. Bigelow 
Sessions: on Findings |i) Vises sine ae siecle unas os eel ashen 
Report of the Student Commission on the Foreign Mis- 

sion Program of the Church ......cccccccncecve 19S 
Findings on Foreign Missions and the Church.......202 
Report of the Committee on Friendly Considerations. .209 
Report of the Committee on a Continuation Committee. .210 
Appendix ..... Sela ake’ E sla d'e to nteeye Sawant aietats o di a's pink a 


INTRODUCTION 


THE growing concern among college students during 
the last few years for the application of Christianity 
to social and international problems had led to a 
rather widespread renewal of interest in the church 
as the agency through which the Christian solution 
of those problems might be found. Since the In- 
dianapolis Student Volunteer Convention at the 
end of 1923, this interest has been focused through 
several significant State and national denomina- 
tional conferences. The National Interdenomina- 
tional Student Conference which met in the First 
Methodist Episcopal Church, Evanston, Illinois, 
from December 29, 1925, through January 1, 1926, 
marks the natural development of this student in- 
terest in the program of the church. 

The Evanston Conference was first proposed by 
two groups of students and denominational repre- 
sentatives which met early in 1925 in New York and 
Chicago. Inquiries sent to a much larger group of 
students in various sections of the United States 
indicated a very definite desire for such a confer- 
ence. Accordingly, in the spring of 1925, the two 
informal groups which had been considering the 
matter met in New York and organized an Execu- 
tive Committee to formulate definite plans. 


5 


6 INTRODUCTION 


This Committee was greatly handicapped by lack 

of the funds and the promotional machinery which 
facilitate the organization of ordinary student con- 
ferences. -Furthermore, there remained but nine 
months in which to prepare for the meeting. Some 
conference technicians declared that the task was 
hopeless. It is indicative, however, of the wide- 
spread demand for such a conference that, imme- 
diately plans were announced, denominational lead- 
ers and, even more important, a great many students 
throughout the country volunteered to give of their 
time and resources to promote the undertaking. 
' From the time the conference was first proposed 
through its concluding session the students, them- 
selves, carried through the major responsibility for 
its development. All of the conference committees 
were composed of students and the students repre- 
sented a considerable majority of the Executive Com- 
mittee. In the actual procedure at Evanston, more- 
over, final indorsement or rejection of any proposal 
was left to the action of the conference itself. Every 
item of major importance, including the details of 
the program itself, was decided by the vote of the 
conference. It is doubtful if any student conference 
of such size has been subject to such complete demo- 
cratic control. The “iron hand” so apparent at 
some student conferences was noticeably lacking at 
Evanston. 

The nine hundred students who gathered at — 
Evanston came from nearly two hundred colleges — 
and universities of the United States and represented 


INTRODUCTION i 


twenty Protestant denominations. They repre- 
sented, perhaps not a cross-section of campus life 
but, rather, a cross-section of campus leadership. 
The delegations from schools with which I am 
familiar contained a remarkably large number of 
those students who are most prominent in college 
activities. For the vast majority of the delegates 
attendance at Evanston involved a considerable 
personal sacrifice. Indeed, for a rather large number 
—including the Antioch student who walked and 
the South Dakota delegates who came via stock train 
—the sacrifice was much more than considerable. 

It was a distinctly church conference which finally 
convened. Plans for the meeting could not have 
progressed a single day had it not been for the active 
cooperation of denominational leaders in many de- 
nominations. The funds contributed, officially, by 
denominational boards constituted the major source 
of income. The support of denominational secre- 
taries and student pastors of various denominations 
provided the only promotional machinery available. 
When the conference assembled, the attendance as 
nonparticipating observers of some three hundred 
and fifty representatives of Christian—and particu- 
larly church—organizations revealed further that 
this was a church gathering. During the entire 
session, on the floor, the discussions were church- 
centered, and since the conclusion of the meeting 
the widespread attention which it has received in 
denominational periodicals indicates that Evans- 
ton was, in every sense, a church conference. 


8 | INTRODUCTION 


The fact that no previous conference of this sort 
had been held placed it under an initial handicap 
and brought about a rather striking revelation. One 
observer declares that “Evanston was a gathering 
of unchurched churchmen.” The first few sessions 
were characterized by a good deal of floundering. 
Christian students—convened to discuss the chureh 
—revealed an unfamiliarity with the subject of 
their discussion. There was a vast amount of 
familiarity with the problems with which the church 
may be expected to deal, such as race and war and 
industrial relations. But there was very little fa- 
miliarity with the way in which the church actually 
is meeting those problems and how its machinery 
may more effectively be used. It appeared that the 
students were much more conversant with criticisms 
of the church than with its constructive achieve- 
ments. As students, apparently, they had been 
given considerable opportunity to discuss these 
problems, in the abstract, and very little opportunity 
to discuss the most likely organization through 
which they could work for their solution. 

The program, however, took this factor into ac- 
count. Prior to the conference various student com- 
missions made intensive studies of various aspects 
of the work of the church. There was a commission 
on foreign missions; another commission on the 
cooperative activities of the church; a third com- 
mission brought in case reports indicating what the 
church is actually doing in the industrial and racial 
fields. The reports of these commissions and the 


INTRODUCTION 9 


discussions which brought to light a vast amount 
of additional evidence altered the whole tenor of 
the conference. Abstract criticisms gave way to a 
spirit of genuine inquiry. At the conclusion I think 
it is no exaggeration to say that the vast majority 
—even of the most critical—went away convinced 
that the church, despite its readily recognized short- 
comings, is actually being used in terms of to-day’s 
practical problems of social and international rela- 
tionships and that students have a major obliga- 
tion to see that its effectiveness is increased. 

Evanston demonstrated another fact which has 
sorely needed demonstration on the college campuses 
of the land, namely, that it is possible to discuss 
the church without being narrowly denominational. 
There has been a widespread feeling that to talk 
in terms of the Christian Church was to narrow 
one’s horizon. This contention was significantly re- 
- futed at Evanston. The discussion, from first to 
last, centered around the church. Not once, how- 
ever, did denominationalism enter into it. Neither 
did theological controversy flame out, despite the 
fact that fundamentalists and modernists had 
worthy representation on the floor. And throughout 
the sessions the problems considered were the same 
problems that other student conferences have consid- 
ered, with the significant difference that at Evans- 
ton this consideration got down to cases and en- 
deavored to relate to practical, working machinery 
capable of helping toward a solution. 

The most striking conviction that dominated the 


10 INTRODUCTION 


conference was the determination for the organic 
unity of Protestantism. On the first day it was — 
emphasized that the person and program of Jesus 
provided common ground on which every delegate 
could stand. A realization of the fundamental na- 
ture of the leadership of Jesus practically obliter- 
ated denominational and theological differences. In 
that realization it was not difficult to see how the 
disunity of Protestantism stood as an obstacle to 
the efforts of organized Christianity to establish the 
kingdom of God on earth. And the students—non- 
chalantly, after the fashion of youth, but none the 
less earnestly—declared their willingness to assume 
the task of bringing Christian unity. 

It was apparent, in these sessions, that there 
is developing a new terminology and method for the 
religious approach to college students. The new 
student religious appeal, it seems to me, is no longer 
that of the rostrum but of the laboratory. There is 
less and less confidence in the validity of mass, emo- 
tional appeals and more and more concern for sim- 
ple statements and demonstrations of significant 
facts. Students, I believe, are little interested in life 
service orators, but they will go a long distance to 
hear a man who “knows his oil”—who can set forth 
evidence and state, in terms of projects, the signifi- 
cance for Christians of the present world situation. 
There is a general determination to allow the facts 
to constitute their own challenge. | 

This tendency, I believe, is altogether hopeful. 
But whether hopeful or not, the fact of its develop- 


INTRODUCTION 11 


ment remains and an appreciation of the Christian 
loyalty of present-day college students must take 
cognizance of it. 

This laboratory outlook was very apparent at 
Evanston. From the outset it was demanded that 
whatever action came from the conference should 
be stated in terms of definite projects. The Con- 
tinuation Committee, therefore, has on its hands not 
a series of resolutions but a list of definite under- 
takings; of jobs to be done in relation to the prob- 
lems discussed. Future student gatherings will, I 
believe, place even greater emphasis upon case 
studies and give less consideration to the mere ex- 
change of opinions. 

The Conference appointed a Continuation Com- 
mittee to carry forward some of the projects pro- 
posed. This Committee has already undertaken its 
work. It is too soon to say what developments will 
come from this “follow up,” but it can be said that 
the Continuation Committee is charged with the 
task of maintaining, if possible, the interdenomi- 
national loyalties which Evanston created; and of 
conserving the conviction, which developed there, 
that students may work through the church for 
the solution of those problems in which, as Chris- 
tians, they are most interested. 

In conclusion, the conference and those connected 
with it are deeply indebted to the board of the 
First Methodist Episcopal Church of Evanston, 
Illinois, to Dr. Ernest F. Tittle, the pastor, and to 
the local arrangements committee for their cordial 


12 | INTRODUCTION 


hospitality in entertaining the conference, and to the 
citizens of Evanston for inviting the delegates into 
their homes. An apology needs also to be made to 
the speakers at the conference for the way in which 
their addresses have necessarily been cut down for 
the purposes of this book. It is felt, however, that 
the substance of the addresses and discussion is 
preserved intact. 
Strantpy HicuH. 


Our Unity of Purpose in the Church 


TUESDAY EVENING SESSION 


OPENING prayer by Marvin Harper, Yale University 
Divinity School: 

Our holy heavenly Father, we come to thee to- 
night in a spirit of humility; we come praying that 


no one of us will think more highly of himself than 


he ought to think. Father, we come praying that 
we may know thy will, that we may seek to listen 
to the small voice that may speak to us during these 
days. We pray, O Father, that we shall come to a 
common understanding, that no matter how many 
different views may be held and expressed, a spirit 
of love, a spirit of understanding shall reign here. 

Father, we pray that we may have the desire to 
seek the truth, that we may desire to give proper 
evaluation to all the matters that shall come before 
us, that we shall try to weigh in the balance all of 
the subjects that we study, that we shall not let 
our emotions overpower us, that we shall not be 
too coldly critical, but that with thy guidance and 
leadership we may come out into a world of light. 

Father, we pray that we may be willing to follow 
the truth wherever we may go. We pray that we 
may have lives of consecration to the high ideals of 
youth. We thank thee that we are young people 


13 


14 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


here together, that youth can have its dreams and 
see its visions. We would pray, O Father, that we 
would not be disobedient to any heavenly visions 
that may come to us. We pray for strength to fol- 
low where thou wouldst lead us. We pray for 
strength to take any steps that require the deepest 
of consecration. We pray that we may not be afraid 
to face criticism of friend or foe, but that we may 
be willing to go forth carrying the banner of Jesus 
Christ, seeking to save the world or to find a means 
of bringing salvation to our friends and to our col- 
lege students. ; 
Father, we pray for guidance. As we start this 
great convention we pray that the spirit of the lowly 
Man of Nazareth may be among us. We pray to 
seek to know the way and the truth and the life, 
and that where it leads us we shall follow, for in 
his spirit we have come together and in his spirit 
we will go through these days together. Amen. 


SPEAKERS: 


Dorothy Gray, student, Phillips University, Enid, 
Okla. 

John H. Elliott, student, University of Michigan. 

Dr. Halford E. Luccock, New York City. 


ADDRESS 
Miss Dorothy Gray : 
The need of achieving Christian unity is by no 
means a newly discovered thing. As far back as 
New Testament days we find the apostle Paul plead- 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 15 


ing with the people of the church at Corinth that 
there be no divisions among them. Many others 
before us have worked hard to bring about unity, 
and they have done much to lighten our task, but 
through all these nineteen hundred years we have 
not had that unity which Christ prayed for; there 
have been and still are divisions among his followers. 

I think we-go a long way toward solving the 
problem of a particular institution or enterprise 
by discovering or redefining the purpose to which 
such institution or enterprise is dedicated. What 
is the church here for? What was in the mind of 
its Divine Founder when he gave it its mission. in 
the world? I think I start on common ground when 
I say that with Jesus the kingdom of God meant 
everything. Take away the expressions “kingdom 
of God” and “kingdom of heaven” from his teach- 
ings and what were to his hearing disciples spirit 
and light become a senseless jumble of words. Many 
times in the New Testament the word “church” is 
made comprehensive enough to mean the Kingdom. 
Christ said, “I will build my church for kingdom] 
and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against 
it.” Paul satd that Jesus loved the church, or king- 
dom, and gave himself up for it. 

Hence, in view of the fact that the heart of Jesus’ 
message was the Kingdom, in view of the fact that 
he made pretentious preparations for it, taught his 
disciples to pray for it, and then expressly said that 
he came to establish the Kingdom, I think it would 
not be possible to make a clearer statement of the 


16 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


purpose of the church than to say it is the purpose 
of the church to establish the kingdom of God in the 
world. 

If it is a business of the church to establish the 
Kingdom in the world, what do we mean by “the 
Kingdom”? What did Jesus mean by it? Well, 
take his Golden Rule and brotherly love from his 
teachings and you leave them barren and cold. 
Paul interpreted the Kingdom in terms of peace 
and righteousness. Hence, if it is the business of 
the church to bring in the Kingdom, the church 
will establish the kingdom of brotherhood and 
righteousness. 

If it is the business of the church to establish the 
kingdom of righteousness, what a Herculean task 
confronts her! Righteousness of individuals, right- 
eousness of relationships, social righteousness—ours 
is the most difficult task of the ages. But a divided 
church can never win the world to righteousness. 
Disunity of moral forces can never compete with the 
unity of immoral forces. The forces of unright- 
eousness will never be torn asunder until the church 
learns to pull together. 

One of the essentials to the success of any enter- 
prise in the world to-day is efficiency. It is no more 
possible for the Church of Christ to carry on its 
work successfully in an inefficient way than it is 
for any other organization to do so. The slipshod, 
inefficient methods we are now using are a danger 
to the very existence of the church. We have to-day 
literally hundreds of denominations of the Protes- 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 17 


tant faith. Each of these attempts to cover the same 
field, each keeps up missionary boards, publishing 
houses, denominational institutions, organized ma- 
chinery parallel to the others. This unnecessary, 
needless waste is responsible for inestimable loss to 
our church. Where there is one fine church build- 
ing many others are built close to it. 

In rural communities the same thing is true. Two 
or three churches in one community are unable to 
exist for our divisions, while in other communities 
there are no churches at all. In our local churches 
there is also much duplication and waste by such 
organizations as our missionary societies, ladies’ 
aid societies, and Christian Endeavor, each trying 
to cover the same field. 

With our wastefulness, our needless duplications 
and our rank inefficiency, is it any wonder that 
things are in the state that they are? No wonder 
the religious leaders of the day are working and 
promoting unity! No wonder students meet in con- 
vention to discuss unity! Efficiency in church busi- 
ness demands unity. The existence of the church 
depends on unity. 

At the very mention of unity some folks shake 
their heads and say it can’t be done. Yet much has 
been done along the lines of unity for many years. 
True, we are not one in our creeds and ordinances. 
We refuse to cooperate in many instances because 
of our different beliefs. We differ widely in our 
theology. Yet in a few great crises we have been 
known to work together in the same harness witb 


18 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


Christians of other religious sects. During the 
World War we worked hand in hand to relieve suf- 
fering. At the time of the Japanese earthquake we 
did the same. We cooperated in the efforts which | 
resulted in the Eighteenth Amendment. The Inter- | 
church World Movement is another example of 
united effort. The eight-hour day in the steel mills 
is a direct testimony as to what can be done through 
united effort under the banner of Christ. 

In the foreign field to-day there are some actual 
unions in educational enterprises. Christian En- 
deavor has also been a means of bringing a greater 
spirit of unity. 

Christian unity is not an impossibility. I think 
I truly represent the views of many when I say that 
unity must be first of all unity of spirit, churches 
working in harmony, publishing houses spreading 
the Word of God, missionary boards that can spend 
their money entirely for education and evangeliza- 
tion without waste, both at home and abroad. There 
is no limit to the power for good that a united 
Christianity could exert. 

Unity of spirit comes first. There can be no real 
unity, no actual cooperation, without it, and when 
we have taken this one step, the next obvious step 
for us to take will present itself; we have the assur- 
ance that the Master will show us the next step and 
give us the strength to take it. 

Tradition has it concerning the site for Jerusalem 
that two brothers lived side by side, one married and 
with a family, the other single and living alone. 








YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 19 


At harvest time each of the two brothers sat in 
his home thinking of the other. The married 
_ brother, thinking of his unmarried brother, sym- 
| pathizing with him because of his loneliness, de- 
cided that next morning he would take some sheaves 
from his wheat field to his brother. The unmarried 
| brother, sympathizing with his brother because of 
_ his burden in supporting a family on a small income, 
decided that next day he would take some of the 
_ sheaves from his wheat field over to his brother. 
Next morning each brother, as he had planned, 
started across the line fence and met the other. At 
the place where two brothers met, each with his 
sheaves to help the other, Jerusalem was built. 

When we as brothers in Christ are willing to 
- make manifest our love for each other-in the sacri- 
- fice of our divisive opinions and all those things 
which at present divide us, then the new Jerusalem 
of peace, righteousness and brotherhood will be 
built. 


| ADDRESS 
Mr. John Elliott 


The purpose of the conference this evening and 
the next three days, I take it, is to find out in what 
way the youth of America can fit into the religious 
program of Christ, fit into the program of religion 
as we want that religion to be made known, trying 
as best we can during these four days to fit our 
high ideals, our youthful inexperience, into the 
grooves that are already worn, already made. 


20 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


To-night we are’ met as an interdenominational 
student gathering to delve into that religion; but 
before we are fairly under the surface we come 
across that strange phenomenon in our religion of 
to-day called denominationalism, and most of us, I 
suspect, are here to-night as representatives of our 
own particular denominations. I beg of you, how- 
ever, in the meeting of to-night and that are in those 
meetings that are to come to think of yourselves as 
the youth of the present and not tagged with the 
denominational emblem that signifies the system 
out in the world to-day. 

May we first glance a minute at the present sys- 
tem of church unity or disunity, or, at any rate, the 
denominational system in the United States. In the 
first place, we have some two hundred separate de- 
nominations, each one of them having its own min- 
isters to train, its own missionary bodies and mis- 
Sionaries to support, its own congregations to edu- 
cate along the particular orthodox line of its par- 
ticular faith. We have a competition in our cities 
and in our towns between the various denominations 
that is every kind of competition but the proper 
kind. If there were rivalry, for instance, for a depth 
of spiritual insight, or if the churches were com- 
peting for the sacrifice and the religious experience 
of their members, perhaps that competition would 
be fine, but we don’t have that kind of competition ; 
we find the kind of competition that surrounds the 
building of a new church, a material kind of com- 
petition that emphasizes things that certainly Christ 








YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 21 


never emphasized, and that are hindering our prog- 
ress because they detract from the main purpose 
| of the church. 

We find this Methodist church installing a larger 
organ because the Presbyterian church across the 
way has just built a new manse. When we hear 
that the Baptist church around the corner has taken 
in one hundred and one and one-half new members, 
we discover that we have got to have more pep 
and zest to make ourselves the biggest men’s Bible 
class in town. 

Competition among the churches has resulted in 
strife and bitterness, and yet through our freedom, 
as we love to call it, our freedom of belief which 
has resulted in the organization of some two hun- 
dred denominations, there has failed to come any 
unified single religious program that affects and in- 
fiuences every class in the community. 

Let us look briefly at the organizations and agen- 
cies that are to-day trying to cooperate and unite 
the various denominations into one central religious 
purpose, the agencies that are trying to gather into 
one basket, so to speak, the scattered efforts of the 
denominational groups. 

First of all, we have the Federal Council of 
Churches of Christ in America, an organization that 
represents the thirteen largest denominations of the 
country and which, on occasion, speaks for the 
United Christian Church of America on problems of 
social and political importance. A similar group 

that is trying to cooperate in denominational efforts, 


22 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


similar to the Federal Council of Churches, is the 
City Council of Churches, organized in most of the 
large cities of our country. Then, too, in some 
States—though in very few—and some counties we 
have groups similar to the City Councils or the 
Federal Council of Churches, which try especially 
to watch the planting of new churches and the 
weeding out of others in communities where it is 
economically inadvisable to conduct services. 

The function of the church and the purpose of the 
church have been suggested in the preceding speech. 
I have been brought up in a denomination. Most 
of us have been brought up in a particular denom- 
ination and have learned its history, have known 
of the various boards, and probably every year have 
had placed before us for our youthful inspection 
the activities of the various boards. However, I 
have come to the conclusion that for some reason 
or other denominationalism is not necessary and 
that it is not the God-given way of carrying on 
Christ’s will on earth; and if it is not necessary 
and if it is hindering the progress of religion in 
America, what is the solution for the denomina- 
tional strife? 

The purpose of the church, as I see it, in the new 
day is not that of the hospital. We used to think 
that the church was a sort of hospital where the 
spiritually sick or the morally lame or the reli- 
giously rundown could come and get a cure. I 
think we have about passed that into the archives 
of church history. The church should have as its 


4 
a 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 23 


function, I believe, the socializing of the community 
or the group, the socializing in a finer and a better 
way, and should point out to that group with which 
it comes into contact the Christian message for 
a Christlike living in society. In other words, my 
ideal of the church and the church’s purpose is the 
working out as best it can of a plan by which human 
beings can better live together. Humanity’s better- 
ment should be the prime ideal and purpose of the 
churches in America. Human beings, social forces, 
should have their residing and abiding stimulus in 
the church. Let us investigate and see just how 
that purpose, that mission, of the churches and of 
the denominations has been fulfilled up to the pres- 
ent time. 

I believe that the church, first of all and primarily, 
should be the community center or the great com- 
munity concentrated effort for the creation of the 
standards or the formation of the patterns, the 
group morals. Those patterns of conduct and of 
morality should issue from that simple unified reli- 
gious body of the church. Yet I claim that the de- 
nominational church has failed to be effective in the 
social life of the communities in America. I think 
the denominational churches—religion as organized 
at present—have failed to prove themselves the 
united, concentrated force in the community; they 
have failed to show through group action, group 
knowledge, how best to carry on social existence. 
Up to the present time I think the church has been 
ineffective as a leader in the establishment of new 


24 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


patterns in the group. I think it also has been inef- 
fective in establishing itself in the community as 
the prime and the greatest incentive for religious 
or spiritual life. In other words, I think the church 
has been ineffective in establishing itself as the 
great one body, the one-purposed organization to 
which all can look for guidance in their moral prob- 
lems and their religious living, and which should 
concentrate especially on the group idea of existence. 

What has been the policy of the church or of 
denominationalism as at present organized in its 
dealings with the other questions of the present day? 
J maintain that the church has been ineffective and 
has lacked courage in dealing with the industrial 
welfare and the industrial problems of our land. 
I think the church has been too content to preach its 
gospel of goodwill, to throw out in very cold and 
dignified manner the moral laws of the Bible, and 
for some reason has been afraid to be soiled by a 
somewhat sordid world in applying those laws that 
it has dared to preach. 

Industrial commissions are fine, and yet we all 
know that many think of the church as a capitalis- 
tie organization, and I suppose because many of its 
members are of that capitalistic group we hesitate 
to delve into the industrial problems; friction would 
be sure to follow if we did. 

The church has not gone into the settlement, nor 
has it attempted to evolve any method of industrial 
betterment, because the members have thought that 
the church’s business was to throw out the general 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 25 


law and leave it to the individual for personal ap- 
plication. Yet I am wondering when there is a weak 
brother to be helped, when there is a great wrong 
to be remedied, and the church does not act, if it 
can really call itself Christian. 

I maintain, further, that the church as at pres- 
ent organized has sidestepped or has whitewashed 
the issue of race. I believe that the race issue, the 
race question in America, is something that the 
Church of Christ should grasp and deal with in a 
very forward manner. The church has organized 
interracial commissions; we have had exchange of 
pulpits between white and black, and yet at the 
present time the church has failed to maintain itself 
as an organized force for the creating of a public 
opinion that has had behind it Christ’s ideal of 
brotherliness, of brotherly kindness, of tolerance to 
our neighbors. 

Furthermore, I charge that the church has been 
un-Christlike in its attitude on war and interna- 
tional relations. I believe that the church has time 
after time been hypocritical in its attitude on war 
and militarism. I believe that the Church of Christ 
has been unwilling to carry through the fine ideals 
on which it was organized. Time after time have we 
heard preachments about peace and brotherly love, 
and yet under our denominational system at the 
present time we have failed to put forward a def- 
inite, concrete program of the united church for 
peace education in our country; but, on the other 
hand, time after time have we been organized dur- 


26 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


ing the wars to carry on the education for war, for 
murder, for hatred, because the government has 
maintained that such a war was a righteous one. 

I maintain that the church in the past, through 
its denominational system, has been used as a tool 
of the government for the creating of a warlike 
spirit, for the creating of an attitude toward our 
fellow men that is directly opposite to the teachings 
of Jesus. Yet how can we expect the church to be 
unwarlike or to have any other attiude toward inter- 
national relations than that it now has? If we 
are divided and fighting against each other in two 
hundred denominations, how could it be otherwise? 
How can we expect the church to have any other 
than a nationalistic ideal, a nationalistic atmos- 
phere, when through our denominational groupings 
we are cultivating in our church the same sort of a 
selfish, independent existence that we condemn in 
our government? I have been pretty free in my criti- 
cisms of the church. I admit that the solution of 
the problem is not very apparent. Yet I think that 
the youth of to-day have something very definite to 
contribute toward the Church of Christ. 

We have that which youth always has; that is, a 
great, sincere, burning passion to right a wrong, 
to see that justice is done, to see that our ideals are 
made effective; and because we have that desire 
and that enthusiasm and that ability, although with- 
out experience, to carry on that program of ideals, 
I think we should seriously consider a solution to- 
our denominational problems. | 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 27 


I think that denominational lines, denominations 
themselves, once were created because freedom was 
burning in the hearts of their creators. Yet I think 
denominational lines do not draw distinction enough 
or are not on a firm enough foundation for a really 
effective church to exist. I think a new alignment is 
necessary, and an alignment founded on purpose 
and belief rather than on the somewhat petty and 
immaterial questions that most of our denomina- 
tions set up as their requisites to-day. 

I have no idea in which form this organization 
shall take place, but I do have a conviction that the 
denominational lines, because of their false basis, 
should be torn down to the extent that this new 
grouping should come along the alignment of pur- 
pose for the social betterment, for the carrying out 
of a social good, so that all classes of humanity in 
the community shall be touched and all processes of 
life shall come within the range of Christian influ- 
ence. ? 


ADDRESS 
Dr, Halford E, Luccock 


In that profound volume of theology, Alice in 
Wonderland, there is one place where the dormouse 
and Alice are sitting together listening to the in- 
quest that is being held over who took the cele- 
brated tarts that were made by the Queen of Hearts. 
Alice has just taken one of those little biscuits which 
make her grow larger or smaller alternately. This 
time it made her grow larger, and soon the dor- 


28 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


mouse felt that he was being pushed over to the end 
of the bench. So he snarled out to Alice, “Quit 
shoving me!” 

“l’m not shoving you,” Alice said, “I’m growing.” 

“Well,” said the dormouse, “you can’t grow in 
here.” ; 

Unfortunately, that has very often been the atti- 
tude of the church to the expanding minds within 
it, and, to the infinite loss of the kingdom of God, 
they have had to do their growing outside. 

I really belong to this glorious crowd of witnesses 
assembled in the gallery, so that perhaps I have 
some right to speak for them, and on their behalf 
I would say that their message to this gathering is 
that you can grow in here, or, perhaps, to put it 
a little more grammatically, you may grow in here 
if you can grow anywhere. 

I think it is a profoundly significant gathering 
for the college, for one thing because it is a sign of 
ferment amid the very large expanse of complacent 
indifference that sets on great sections of the Ameri- 
can college campus like the pall of a quiet Sun- 
day afternoon. Before we get through this meeting 
we should hear, doubtless, a great deal about the 
conservatism and conventionality of age. I think 
that all of us do recognize that there is a consider- 
able bit of hard-shelled conservatism and conven- 
tionality on the American college campus, and indif- 
ference to the great problems of human relation- 
ships. It is my deepest hope and my greatest faith 
in this conference that here will be found some of 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 29 


that intelligent conscious and intense rebellion 
against ways which have led the world to its present 
state, and a real passion, and that the real passion 
to discover a better way for mankind will here find 
free and lasting expression. 

One of the feelings that is very widespread among 
undergraduates about the church is that it is con- 
cerned too much with the issues of a bygone age. 
You meet the feeling that its messages and its con- 
troversies too much suggest old, unhappy, far-off 
things and battles long ago. Some might be dis- 
posed to admit that the church is the house by the 
side of the road, but the road is the road to yester- 
day, that too often it has been occupied with the 
prejudices and the passions of a bygone day. It is 
not the things that look backward that most con- 
vincingly get the fervid and eager interest of youth. 

The second feeling (and here again I am merely 
trying to interpret things which have come to my 
ears as they have come to the ears of anyone who 
has them) is the feeling that about many of the 
great things which elicit the deepest interest of our 
hearts and the hearts of the world, the church has 
not had very much to say. Some one has put it 
rather graphically that it has so manipulated, per- 
haps unconsciously, but so used the words of Jesus 
that the Jesus who came to upset the world has 
become one sweetly solemn thought which is up- 

setting to nobody. 

_ The danger has been that instead of doing what 
_it might have done, the church, moving like a column 


30) YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


of flame, of fire and of smoke before the moving 
column of humanity, guiding it into some promised 
land, has seemed to stop and spin around like a 
little merry-go-round on a highly organized round 
of activity. The danger of substituting that round 
of activity for a prophetic adventure into a new 
land is increased the farther on we go in a great pro- 
gram of church building. I don’t believe we ever 
faced any greater responsibilities in that direction 
than we face just now when the program for church 
building in the United States of America this year 
that is just closing amounts to something like $500,- 
000,000. Of. course, that $500,000,000 represents in 
a very large way additions to the spiritual assets 
of the country. I would not have you forget that 
for a moment. We ought not to forget for a mo- 
ment, either, that it represents very truly and defi- 
nitely spiritual liabilities of a large size, for when 
there is that much of an investment in so many mil- 
lions of mortgages, the danger will be that the chief 
concern of the church will be to preserve the placid 
calm, that nothing will interfere with the orderly 
run of the business of the country, no matter how 
many injustices may be buried under that placid 
calm. The danger is that perfect peace will be the 
only anthem we will sing in regard to the industrial 
situation. Many of us have seen both the church 
and the college standing in the face of industrial 
situations that literally shrieked to the skies, stand- 
ing there as dumb as a bronze Buddha because they 
had too much interest in the situation. } 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH ol 


What shall it profit a church if it gain the whole 
world of Gothic arches and stained-glass windows 
and lose its own force? The result will be the ironi- 
cal one that in gaining a perfectly magnificent place 
in which to say something we will have very little 
to say. 

One other thing that I would like to drop into 
your minds in view of some of these feelings that 
perhaps some numbers share is the responsibility 
that youth has for bringing to the church gifts 
which youth alone can give to the church. It is not 
merely the privilege of youth to speak, but it is the 
responsibility of youth to give the things that can 
never be given unless youth does give them, 

The one gift that I would mention, a gift that 
is desperately needed both by the world and by the 
church, is the gift of a fearless, honest criticism. I 
do not mean an irreverent criticism nor a flippant 
tirade against things as they are, but the gift of a 
perfectly open-minded and honest criticism, for 
youth can bring the priceless gifts to the church of 
a pair of fresh eyes which are not yet affected by 
astigmatism, and an open mind; and an open mind 
is a great thing to let loose in the world. 

It is because youth is able to bring a fair look 
_ at the world, an open mind that is unshackled by 
_ the hesitations and the fears of tradition, that it 
can bring these gifts of honest criticism. Without 
_ that redeeming criticism of fresh minds the world 
is hopeless. Yet do not be under any pleasant 
_ illusion that the world is feverishly waiting for your 


32 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


criticism, because the attitude both of the world 
and of the church very often has been the historic 
attitude of the church which said to young William 
Carey when he offered to go to India as a mission- 
ary, “Young man, sit down!” Yet young men have 
had an irritating way of standing up. 

Of course the church has not got any use for a 
blind Samson that wants to topple over a whole 
structure. It is not a task for the dynamiter. It 
is rather a task like the remodeling of an ancient 
building which must be approached with reverence, 
with courage, with a new plan. Very often the col- 
lege of elder statesmen is very much afraid of 
courage plus a new plan. 

Just for one illustration, take the greatest ques- 
tion that is before the world to-day, the question of 
war. The attitude taken, sometimes very uncon- 
sciously, sometimes rather consciously, sometimes 
only implicitly, is something like this: “Of course, 
war is a terrible thing, it is a perfectly awful thing, 
but don’t do anything about it.” 

You may grandly begin and say, “Whereas, war 
is the greatest social sin of our times, Whereas, war 
is the negation of the spirit of Jesus,’ but you stop 
there, you don’t go on until you get to the “There- 
fore, be it resolved.” I think that the greatest social 
fact of our time is that an increasing company of 
youth are going on to the “therefore, be it resolved.” 

There is an old adage to the effect that he who 
pays the piper calls the tune. In the 10,000,000. 
lives laid down in the war, youth has paid a price 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 33 


that is staggering and outrunning the power of the 
imagination of man to conceive. Youth has paid 
the piper and youth will call the tune. It will not 
be any screeching hymn of hate, but a blended 
chorus of voices in all languages Sinegae “Blest be 
the tie that binds.” 

Finally, there are some things that I would very 
swiftly mention that must be taken into account in 
any honest and open examination of the church. 
Some capacities and aptitudes and abilities of the 
church do seem to me, for I am frank to confess it, 
permanent credentials for the chureh to take leader- 
ship in the redemption of society. The first is that 
the church has always maintained a _ persistent 
capacity for self-criticism, and that capacity for 
self-criticism has been the seed of new life, it has 
made possible a recurring springtime within the 
church, so that from within, all down the years 
through history, there have come to the church the 
most penetrating and keen criticisms from the 
inside, and that is the sort of power which enables 
the chureh to right itself and find its right direc- 
tion in an open sea. It was one of the legacies that 
the church got from Jesus, for Jesus made his touch- 
stone the service of the church to humanity, its min- 
istry to the abundant life of man, and that was the 
touchstone of the perfectly devastating criticism of 
Jesus of the church of his own time. 

The keenest critic that the Christian Church had 
in the first century was not some Roman scoffer ; 
it was Saint Paul. And if you will turn to the 


ot YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


pages of the New Testament to the Epistles of Paul, 
you will be amazed to find out how much of it is 
given to criticism of tendencies in the church that 
came from a rich mind that went all the way from 
the most tender pleas to the most blistering scorn. 
It has been the glory of the church that all down 
through its history, from the time of Francis of 
Assisi to our own time, down to the days of Walter 
Rauschenbusch and Harry Ward, that it has 
launched within it the most redeeming and uplift- 
ing criticism. 

The second is like unto it, that is the fact that 
the church has always been through all its history 
the prolific mother of ugly ducklings. Again and 
again in Christian history it has given birth to the 
most atrociously ungainly and scandalous creatures 
who defied its every convention and tradition and 
yet were undeniably its own children. And yet 
that has been the most glorious page in the history 
of the church. It simply means that in the brood 
o€ priests there has come again and again the 
prophet whose advent has been breaking up that 
pious calm, like the advent of Amos, the herdsman 
of Tekoa, who comes in his time and says, “For three 
transgressions of Israel, yea and for four, I will not 
remit the pnnishment thereof, for they sold the 
righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of shoes.” 

Ugly ducklings have blossomed into swans and 
after two or three centuries of wondering what to 
do with them the church has canonized them, recog: 
nizing them as prophets and saints. 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 35 


The other fact which must be kept in mind is the 
fact that in its high hours the Church of Christ has 
always been a youth movement. That was true in the 
very beginning when a company of young men under 
thirty stood in those Galilean hillsides and listened 
to another young Man under thirty, and as they 
came under his spell they went out to do nothing 
less than to turn the world upside down. 

That was not the only youth movement in his- 
tory. There has always been one. We talk about 
the Pilgrim Fathers. We also think of the Pilgrim 
Fathers as needing to open an old folks’ home the 
moment they got to Plymouth, but there was only 
one man on the Mayflower over forty-five years of 
age, and that was Miles Standish. William Brad- 
ford, so long the governor of the colony, was thirty- 
one years old, and Edward Winslow, foreign min- 
ister of the colony, was twenty-seven. | 

Fifty years later you can find another youth 
movement, the beginning of the Methodist Church 
in America in 1784. At that Christmas Conference 
at Baltimore when it was organized, there were two 
bishops present, one of them thirty-seven years old 
and the other thirty-six, and the average age of the 
one hundred or so members of the Conference was 
thirty-five. The fathers! God bless them! 

If there is any place under the blue dome of 
heaven where by every honored tradition youth has 

aright to speak up and be a part, it is in the Church 

of Jesus Christ. 

The last is the greatest of all. That is the per- 


36 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


sistent and the perennial capacity of the church for 
the rediscovery of Jesus, for the rediscovery of 
Jesus. Perhaps you may say it is a tragedy that 
Jesus needs to be rediscovered. Yet that is an in- 
evitable process of growth. You couldn’t have 
growth or progress without it. I don’t have any 
knowledge of any surer indication of the measure- 
less greatness of Jesus than that he could be redis- 
covered in nineteen different centuries and each 
time loom larger before the mind and the imagina- 
tion of the world. 

Again and again the church has lifted away the 
debris of Western civilization which has accumu- 
lated and smothered the figure of Jesus, and lift- 
ing it away has revealed to its generation the figure 
of its living Master. 

Christ is the great credential of the church, and 
it is the capacity of the church to rediscover Christ 
and to re-present him in living terms to the age in 
which it exists that forms the church’s greatest 
credential for leadership. 

So it seems to me that this question that we are 
going to discuss, and discuss in the most open and 
free way that we can, “Can we use the church?” is 
something very like the question, “Can we use 
Niagara Falls?” Niagara Falls was a great spec- 
tacle through the years until men began to dream 
that it might not only be a wonderful spectacle but 
it might be a wonderful power, and so they har- 
nessed it to use it. The question of whether we can 
use the church is just this question to find out defi- 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 37 


nitely enough what it is we want to do and then 
run our connecting belts to this great, everpouring 
source of power that it may carry light, heat and 
power out into all the world. 


A Look at the Church 48 
Appreciation 


WrpNespAy Mornine Session, Decempnr 30, 1925 


SPEAKERS: 


Georgianna MacKay, student, Colorado Teachers 
College. 

John Know, student, Emory University, Georgia. 

E, EH. Witcraft, student, University of Chicago. 

Dr, Reinhold Niebuhr, Detroit. 


ADDRESS 


“WORSHIP—A NEED MET BY THE CHURCH” 
Miss MacKay 


Man has always been and is a worshiper. Man 
always needs to reach out beyond himself to some 
finer perfection, to something beyond which he him- 
self can attain, and this is in his search for God. 
There are three phases of worship, I think. The 
first one is that worship is a life, not a ceremony, 
it is a permanent state of consciousness where we 
see beauty in all things, where love casts out fear 
and beholds God in the face of Christ, Christ glorify- | 
ing and beautifying all life. Here in this phase of 
worship prayer verges toward companionship and 
38 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 39 


worship becomes a permanent state of consciousness. 

The second phase of worship is this: while we 
have this permanent state of consciousness in life 
then there are times when the individual conscious- 
ness is moved to seek formal and concrete expres- 
sion in its emotions toward God. Then in that time 
when we are alone with God, we come to realize 
what God is and that God is a rewarder of them that 
diligently search for him. 

The third phase of religion is the one probably 
in which we are most interested. It is that phase of 
worship concerned with the church. One of the 
main functions of Christian society is grouping to- 
gether to worship. You remember Paul told us we 
must not neglect the assembling of ourselves to- 
gether. It isn’t enough that man shall worship and 
that all men shall pray and that all life shall be 
beautiful; it isn’t enough that we must enter into a 
closet or into a lonely place and commune with 
him. We must have more than a devout conscious- 
ness, we must have more than these wonderful indi- 
vidualistic outpourings; we must be a worshiping 
assembly, the coming together of believers for the 
solemn transactions with God which shall be for 
memorial before the Most High, for testimony be- 
fore the world and for the nourishment of our bodies 
in Christ. 

Worship in the churches is not perfect, and we 
young people to-day are demanding something of 
the church which many times we do not get. Sin- 
clair Lewis says that most of our Protestant 


40 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


churches to-day are simply mass meetings in big 
barns, and the only place where one can worship 
truly is in the Roman Catholic churches. Have 
the Catholics something that the Protestant 
churches do not have? If so, what is it? Why 
can they give us this atmosphere of worship which 
our souls crave and which we need while other 
churches do not do this thing? Sometimes I think 
it is because our churches, or many of the Prot- 
estant churches, are indifferent to it. They have 
become careless. It has become a form and they 
have not prepared the different elements which come 
into church life; they have not prepared to give us 
the atmosphere and the feeling which we crave and 
which our hearts so desire. | 

Another thing that is left out so much is the beau- 
tiful mystery of worship. We have tried to make it 
a science when it is truly an art. Jesus had that 
wonderful art of understanding, of cooperation, of 
harmony, of love, of brotherhood which we do not 
find to-day. We know it is the thing that we erave, 
our whole being cries out for it. What is it that 
Jesus had that we do not? 

We know Jesus went to church. It was his 
custom every day to go to the synagogue. I some- 
times think maybe the preachers weren’t so good, 
there were things he didn’t like, I am sure, while he 
was in the synagogue, the meetinghouse of God, but 
he found the thing which he wanted. He loved 
beauty, he loved the quietness in which he could find 
God and in which God could speak to him, and 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 41 


through that speaking we know the great power 
that he received to do things that have never been 
done before. It is within our grasp, it is within our 
reach if we will lay hold of it, I am sure. 

In closing, let’s think about it this way, that the 
church is trying to meet this need of worship, is 
trying to fill this longing in our hearts, and let us 
go to the trysting place of God, the church, as a 
vessel cleansed, so that when his great love is poured 
out upon us, we will know; we will know what he 
has for us to do, we will know his will in our lives, 
and then when we know we will receive the power 
to do as he wishes. 


QuESTIONS FoR Miss MacKay 


Is not the kingdom of God something that is 
primarily within you, and don’t you lose a good deal 
of the value of the kingdom of God by trying too 
much to make it objective? 

Answer: The kingdom of God is within, but you 
can’t keep it within. When you have that power, 
it is bound to radiate out to do things. 

Question: Do you think that the churches wherein 
worship has been considered of prime importance 
have developed the subjective aspect of religion and 
forgotten the objective aspect of it? 

Answer: No; if it is worship in the true sense, it 
always pushes you out into action. In some 
churches where worship has become just a form they 
have probably made it subjective instead of objec- 
tive, but this is not true worship. 


42 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


ADDRESS 


“THE INTELLECTUAL RESPONSIBILITY OF 
THE CHURCH” 


Mr. John Knox 


Let me try to suggest in just a few words what 
the intellectual task of the church is, and then to 
indicate in a few minutes some of the things the 
church is doing in order to meet the need, to assume 
the responsibility. The first task and the most 
obvious task of the church in an intellectual way 
is to interpret Christianity, of course, in intellec- 
tual terms that will make it possible of acceptance; 
more than that, effectual in the life of any particu- 
lar age. 

I think the church’s intellectual responsibility 
does not end with this obvious need of adjusting 
Christianity to the intellectual forms of the day. 
The church’s obligation is to recognize the rights 
and privileges of the intellectual life, to recognize 
that the laws of man’s rational experience cannot 
be violated. Though the process may be long and 
gradual, and in some cases even dangerous, surely 
it is true that the strivings of an emancipated 
intelligence will eventually bring us to the truth 
as surely as will the aspirations of free spirit 
bring us at last to God, and in no way whatever 
otherwise can either God or truth be realized. 

All right, what then is the church doing to meet 
this need ? 

In the first place, the church is maintaining 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 43 


schools and colleges, universities, and so on, 
throughout our land where intelligent persons may 
feel quite at home. That hasn’t always been true, 
you know. Most of us, I suppose, are from denomi- 
national colleges and universities. I am sure you 
will bear out that testimony. 

It is maintained by scientific experts that there 
is a little dogmatism in our church schools. In 
other words, church colleges and universities have 
established themselves in the educational life of 
our land as thoroughly reliable and _ scientific. 

To-day the religious education policy of the 
church is becoming more and more intelligent. 
Sunday-school literature is taking into account as 
never before all modern information, points of view 
and attitudes that are being presented to our youth, 
and becoming more and more intellectually pos- 
sible. Training schools for teachers are sharing 
the same intellectual methods as do our other edu- 
cational institutions. Everywhere over our land 
in all denominations the tendency is very apparent 
to make intellectually effective Christianity. 
Leadership of our church is coming largely out of 
our schools and is more and more intelligent. 
Preachers are coming more and more thoroughly to 
recognize their intellectual responsibility and to 
present the gospel of Jesus in such a way as to 
make it effectual in the life of intelligent, well-in- 
formed people in our modern age. 

In other words, weaknesses in the church rest not 
in the church as such, but inhere in our humanity 


44 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


as such, as was brought out last night. In fact, 
the most colossal and obvious example of dogma- 
tism that our century has seen was not an act of 
the church at all and a church body; it was the 
act of a State Legislature. 

There isn’t a city in our great land in which I 
do not hear the voice of more than one great 
prophet, and their number is rapidly increasing. 
I bring you an encouraging message. I do so not 
because I am assigned this subject; I do so be- 
cause I feel it. I do so because I feel that it is 
our task not to scrap the church. What are we 
going to put in place of it? Where are we going to 
find elsewhere the moral idealism that will be neces- 
sary to making any great step toward the kingdom 
of God? Where are you going to find it except 
in the church? They say the church is not socially 
minded, the church is not aware of the great in- 
tellectual, industrial, and social and international 
problems; surely, not fully. Go outside of the 
church and see if you can find any more awareness 
of those things than inside. You don’t. Any other 
organization that undertook the same purpose 
would have the same people in it, would be char- 
acterized by the same deficiencies and failures. [I 
am not here to insist the church is perfect; I am 
here to insist it is our task to enter into the life 
of the church, try to make it over, try to bring 
back to it the spirit and mind of Jesus and make 
it really effective in serving this modern age in 
every respect. 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 45 


QumsTIONS ASKED Mr. Knox 


Question: What right has a preacher to preach 
from a pulpit given him by a congregation views 
that are contrary to the views of the congregation? 

Answer: I feel that the preacher has no busi- 
ness to state in the pulpit any abstract truth, no 
matter how true it may be, unless it is going to 
have vital connection with the lives of those to 
whom he is speaking, unless it is going to mean 
something in their lives. 

Question: When is the Sunday school to be lifted 
intellectually out of the high-school period? 

. Answer: I think signs of progress are obvious in 
the Sunday-school literature policy of nearly all of 
the great denominations of our country. 

Question: How do you account for the fact that 
so many students after they have studied science 
and sociology find it necessary to maintain their 
intellectual self-respect that they must break with 
the church? How are we going to meet that prob- 
lem? 

Answer: I feel that nothing has been exaggerated. 
I feel in nearly every community there is at least 
one brotherhood of Christians with whom an indi- 
vidual of that kind would feel at home. That has 
been true in the cities where I have lived, at least 
in one or two communions such a person who is 
scientifically well informed might feel quite at 
home. 

Question: Would the intellectual life of the min- 
istry and the sermons that it produces be raised 


46 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


if the sermons themselves were subject to questions 
from the floor of the congregation, and would that 
also be a means by which not only the preacher but 
also the congregation could take a more active part 
in this thing called worship? 

Answer: I think there is certainly ates in the 
church program for such an idea. 


Mr. WITcRAFT 


Mr. Witcraft continued the same theme presented 
by Mr. Knox. At the conclusion of, his address he 
was asked the following question: 

Do you think the laboratory method can be sub- 
stituted for faith in religion? | 

Answer: I wouldn’t say that. I would say this, 
however: God can just as truly be found in the test 
tube as he can be found in the Bible. Is that say- 
ing too much? If there is truth in science at all, 
it is Just as true as any truth you can find any- 
where. 

ADDRESS 


Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr 


It is the sorry fate of every human institution to 
be finally corrupted by a curious conspiracy between 
its critics and its friends. Its critics have the 
inclination usually to dissociate themselves from 
the community because they are overcome by the 
consciousness of its weaknesses, and thus they leave 
the institution, the fellowship in the community 
to its uncritical devotees who immediately corrupt, 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 4? 


exaggerate all of its weaknesses and multiply all 
of its sins. The church is in that position. That is 
why I would like to plead with you this morning 
not for loyalty nor for criticism, but for a critical 
loyalty to the institution of the church. 

Of course, if there are those who are so obsessed 
with the weaknesses of the church that they believe 
the kingdom of God can be built only by junking 
the church, I would like to plead with them for 
loyalty as well as criticism as I would like to plead 
with the complacent people for criticism as well 
as loyalty. I believe that there is something in 
the church that has no substitute in any other so- 
ciety or institution. I believe in the church because 
I don’t think that the gospel that we have, which 
is a gospel of love, can ever be adequately incar- 
nated in individuals, it must be incarnated in a 
community. I believe in this community of the 
church ideal. I believe in the church because I 
know that the greatest problem of modern man is 
the problem of his group life. As I see it, every 
group is either very much worse or very much 
better than the individuals who compose it. When- 
ever you form a group upon the basis of the com- 
mon hatred, the group is collectively worse than 
the men in it individually. Whenever you form a 
group on the basis of the highest aspirations, ideals, 
and hopes of any number of people, that is the 
Church of God. It is in that group that you culti- 
vate the antidote of the poison of group hatreds; 
it is in that group that you produce that quality 


48 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


of self-transcendence that there must be in society. 

The church, judged in the light of the ideal, is a 
poor thing indeed. And I would like to consider 
with you this morning, because I believe it belongs 
to a critical appreciation of the church, the secret 
of this strange apostasy of the church from the 
ideal of Jesus. Here is religion, essentially simple, 
a religion of love which tells that. the universe is 
ultimately good, that above and within, beyond the 
chaos of its life, there is meaning and there is mean- 
ing essentially benevolent, that it comes from the 
heart of a father, that this appreciation of the uni- 
verse finally gives meaning to every human life, a 
transcended appreciation of all human beings. The 
gospel is as simple as all that. Out of that simple 
gospel we have made the sort of thing we call 
Protestantism. 

What is the secret of this strange apostasy? In 
the first place, the church suffered from an ill from 
which all institutions suffer. It was organized 
around an ideal, the ideal was the end of its exist- 
ence, but as soon as it was organized, it made its 
existence an end in itself. All institutions do that. 
The church was tempted as all communities are 
tempted. It should have overcome the temptation 
perhaps to a greater degree than other institutions, 
because its ideal was higher, but that is how it 
was tempted naturally. It is impossible to main- 
tain a gospel without a church. It is impossible to 
have any vitality in an ideal without a community 
to support it. Ideals are never powerful until they 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 49 


are incarnate. There is the possibility of corrup- 
tion in every incarnation, either corruption or cruci- 
fixion. We generally choose corruption in prefer- 
ence to crucifixion. 

There is a natural limitation in the church as 
an organization in that it makes its life an end in 
itself. There is an absolute limitation in the very 
fact that religion has at its best an ambition to 
transform life. Religion has also at its best the 
instinct to transcend life, for be you well assured 
that happiness and peace and salvation to a cer- 
tain extent must finally depend not upon the trans- 
formation of life, but upon the transcendence of 
life. You cannot be altogether happy until you can 
say with the apostle, “I know how to be abased and 
I know how to abound.” You cannot have final 
peace if you cannot somehow or other transcend 
the limitations of life. This instinct of transcend- 
ence is a good thing in itself, but it has again and 
again beguiled the church into Dna eS peace 
and unjustified complacency. 

How did we get to this modern Protestantism 
with its easy connivance with Western civilization? 
I should say we got there because the church, the 
Christian religion conquered Western civilization 
and paid the price of that conquest, partial defeat. 
The church conquered Rome and was conquered by 
Rome. The church conquered Greece and was con- 
quered by her philosophers. The church conquered 
the Nordic tribes and was conquered by Nordicism. 
Each time she paid partial defeat for partial victory. 


oo YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


Then came the days of manhood of northern 
Eurepean civilization which began with a reforma- 
tion. We have been assuming that the Reforma- 
tion was a return to the gospel of Jesus Christ. 
That is one of the most fundamental mistakes 
Protestantism has made. Out of it has come our 
arrogance and cheap pride. For one thing, when 
the Protestant Reformation came, it paid the price 
of throwing overboard a great many fine things in 
Roman Catholicism that we will have to fish out of 
the depths of the sea again. 

The Protestant Reformation was a revolt of the 
religion of the inner life against the religion of the 
institution and the church, and it was good. The 
Protestant Reformation was more than that, it was | 
a Teutonic revolt against Latin civilization. You 
will note to this day the only people who are 
Protestants are Nordics. We have had essentially 
no success in evangelizing Slavs or south European 
peoples. One of the things that we will have to 
learn is that Protestantism is not a universal reli- 
gion, but it is essentially the way Nordic people 
have of expressing themselves religiously, and then 
it is the middle classes at that. We are a highly 
parochial religion. 

Out of all these limitations we are trying now to 
come back to something that looks like the original 
gospel and idealism of Jesus. We would like again 
te have the sacrificial pages substituted for all the 
imperial ambitions which we have inherited from 
Rome. We would like to have a spirit of love and 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 51 


substitute it for the fanatic individualism which 
had some virtues but more vices of our north 
European peoples. I believe that there is some 
chance of our getting back to the religion of Jesus 
if we can have enough critically minded members of 
the church who can detach themselves from this 
Western civilization of ours and see its weaknesses 
and detach themselves from the church to a certain 
extent and see its weaknesses and realize that it 
has connived entirely too much with Western civil- 
ization. 

There are two reasons why I think we will be able 
to do something in this generation. First of all, 
because our Civilization is not as obviously success- 
ful as it once was, more obviously successful here 
in America than in Europe. Anybody who gets 
the whole picture is driven in a mood of repentance 
by the failure and bankruptcy of Western life. 

In the second place, our contacts with the 
Oriental world are giving us a new spirit of inde- 
pendence. I believe in the missionary independence 
not so much for the sake of Christianizing the 
heathen as for Christianizing the Christians. I see 
tremendous possibilities of going into the Orient 
and coming upon religious values that we despise 
and to which we have been indifferent. We have 
gone out there as proud Lady Bountifuls and dis- 
cover now we must be humble traders in spiritual 
goods, receiving for everything we give something 
wonderful in return, and each one of these things 
brings us closer to the early Palestinian gospel. 


52 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


I would like to see the original naive religion of 
the prophets culminating in the religion of Jesus 
and overcoming the premature civility of our pres- 
ent age and our present undergraduate population 
which has produced premature civilities by sophisti- 
cation. For the sophistication of the Greek finally 
ran to seed and the sophistication of our own age I 
would like to see substituted the Palestinian gospel, 
if you will, or, rather, the religion of Jesus which 
has known how to detach itself and to act as a 
conscience for society. 

The process by which the kingdom of God is built 
is always to conquer a civilization, find itself en- 
meshed in it too much, detach itself again, conquer 
once more, find itself enmeshed again and detach 
itself once more. Upon these successive detach- 
ments depends all spiritual progress and for this 
detachment we always must depend on the new 
generation. 


Qurstions AskKED Doctor NIgBUHR ~ 


Question: If the speaker considers Protestantism 
highly parochial, I should like to know how he ac- 
counts for the missionary activities of Protestant- 
ism. 

Answer: In so far as the missionary entrance 
has been successful, it is due to the fact that Prot- 
estantism, which, like all other churches, has never 
been completely true to the Lord, has never been 
able altogether to deny him. 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 53 


DISCUSSION 

Miss O’Shields, Texas: “The question we are con- 
sidering is whether mysticism can be made con- 
sistent with our desire for intellectual respect- 
ability.” 

Mr. Edwards, Denver: “I say if faith is the pur- 
suit of an ideal in spite of the consequences and 
mysticism the support and production of stamina 
which will enable us to maintain that type of faith, 
then mysticism is not true mysticism without in- 
tellectual respectability.” 

Mr. Bell, Garrett: “I think I agree with the last 
speaker in saying you must come to some knowledge 
of what mysticism really is first. There are mystics 
and mystics. Think of Paul’s great mysticism. 
Think of John Wesley’s great mysticism. There 
are mystics who have made their impression on the 
life of the country and the life of their own times.” 

Mr. Dempster, Harvard: “I suggest that we go on 
to consider the dissociation of the church from 
Western civilization.” 

Mr. DeLong, Chicago University: “I don’t know 
that we are particularly concerned about the dis- 
sociation of Christianity. I think too often we 
connect that with the church as Christianity. It 
seems to me to be important that we keep Jesus 
in our minds. I suppose you all are doing that. 
Didn’t Jesus furnish a pretty good example of how 
far you could go in conformity to the church as 
it existed? That is, aren’t we to follow Jesus? 
That is our main idea. If this conflicts with some- 


By: YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


thing else, that is not worrying us particularly. As 
long as it is in line with something else that is 
perfectly all right. In other words, Jesus would go 
in the synagogue and worship with them. There 
is nothing particularly wrong in that. Out in life 
he is not going to say this is so and that is so 
and he will conform to your ideas. No, it has been 
said, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ but I say go further; 
in other words, let’s go further with Jesus, and if 
this thing interferes with that, then we haven’t any- 
thing to do with that, it seems to me.” | 

Mr. Weston, Denver: “It occurred to me that one 
reason why we cannot as yet do away with differ- 
ences in denominations or denominational organ- 
izations is not, as has been suggested, worship of 
the leaders of the past, but the property holdings 
of these different denominations and the desire of 
the leaders of the present denominations for self- 
glory or self-power. I mean power and fame that 
would be denied them in a union of these churches.” 

Mr. Masa, Taylor: “I am from the Philippine 
Islands. I think one of the greatest mistakes of 
the missionaries is they are trying to use Western 
civilization instead of Jesus Christ. In my home 
country, the Philippine Islands, they are observing 
Western civilization and we are observing the prin- 
ciples of Jesus Christ. I want to appeal to the 
American people. If you want to bring Jesus 
Christ to the people, you must bring him without 
Western civilization. Western civilization has been 
responsible for the student outbreak in China. If 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH DD 


you want to teach Jesus Christ, you must bring 
Jesus Christ and his blood and his resurrection 
rather than Western civilization.” 

Mr. Ingalls, Oberlin: “Mr. Chairman, I think the 
church has decidedly got to break from Western 
civilization; by that I mean I think we have got to 
go out ahead of it. I think the church can no longer 
take a cue from economists, business men, politi- 
cians; the church has to take a place where it will 
be giving views to them, where a man will come to 
an open forum, a service of any kind, no matter 
how mystical, and get something there which he 
can carry with him into his business. The Chris- 
tianity we have fits our industrial structure; it 
sanctions everything we do. Christianity sanctions 
all the evils of Western civilization. We have got 
to free the clergy from all restraint of power.” 

Summary of Discussion by Dr. Albert Parker 
Fitch: “There are two ideas to-day in this confer- 
ence. One is the notion. that there is a genuine 
and objective and eternal God and that men may 
be saved from the world in him. The other is the 
notion that progress within the human race is real 
and that mankind within itself may work out its 
own salvation by magnanimity. On those two ideas 
you are pulling backward and forward all morning. 
Work on those ideas some more.” 


A Look at the Church: A Study of the 
Opportunity and the Indifference 
of the Church © 


WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON SESSION 


SPEAKERS: ! 

Stanley Dowley, student, Ohio University, Athens, 
Ohio. 

Miss Mattie Julian, student, DePauw University, 
Indiana. 

Dr. Hubert Herring, Ss of the Commis- 
sion on Social Service of the Congregational 
Church, Boston. 


ADDRESS 


THE CHURCH AND INDUSTRY 
Stanley Dowley 


I am not representing any particular group, but, 
on the whole, the things that I want to say to you 
about the church are the things that radicals and — 
the labor movement are saying about the church. 
As I have listened to the discussions on the floor 
of this Conference, I have been convinced that we 
do have a great common ideal, the ideal of a 
brotherly society, the ideal of a Christian world. I 


56 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH BT 


should certainly like to live in a truly Christian 
world, but where we disagree is on the means of 
attaining a cooperative form of society. You think 
that perhaps the church is the means. I think 
that the church has failed and is failing to bring 
about the cooperative form of society. If such a 
society is possible, the labor movement is the means 
of bringing it about. 

J think I am not unduly prejudiced against the 
church for the reason that for so long I have been 
a member of the church. Not over two years ago 
I was a Christian pacifist and it has been a very 
painful thing to me to be forced to give up the reli- 
gion and the faith that has meant so much in my 
past life. Within the last two years I have faced 
some of the realities of life and those realities have 
forced me to the radical position. Radicals base 
their condemnation of the church primarily upon 
the way they interpret history, upon the way they 
see society. 

Historically, civilizations have not been civiliza- 
tions of rationally and nationally unified groups, 
but have been civilizations divided into two main 
classes. There have been an upper class and a lower 
class and as radicals see it, organized religion and 
the church to-day represent the interests of the 
capitalist class. It reflects the idealism of the 
capitalist class, and that throughout history has 
been an instrument in the hands of the dominant 
class in society to suppress the working class. My 
first charge, then, against the church is that his- 


58 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


torically the church has been a weapon in the hands 
of the dominant class of society to keep the workers 
down. History bears this out. The civilizations 
of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome were civiliza- 
tions based on the institution of slavery, and there 
was no conflict between the institution of slavery 
and the religions of those countries. 

During the latter days of Rome, however, there 
was a real attempt to solve the class problem. Jesus 
struck at the very root of it, and had he succeeded 
would have abolished classes and the conflict that 
they always bring about. It is very piste 
that Jesus failed. 

Martin Luther’s agitation during the Reforma- 
tion caused the peasants to revolt, but when the 
revolution left the fields of abstract theology and 
entered the field of concrete social relationships, 
Martin Luther turned against the workers, the 
peasants in that case, and encouraged the princes 
of Germany to destroy them, which they did by 
the hundreds. 

In the second place, I charge that the modern 
church is not interested in and does not know the 
facts concerning the wages and conditions of the 
workers. The average Christian is earnestly 
alarmed and wonders what the world is coming to 
when he hears that bricklayers are getting ten and 
even fourteen dollars a day, but he doesn’t take 
into consideration, he doesn’t know that the brick- 
layers work only sixty-three per cent of the possible 
work days in the year. I have heard the same 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 59 


thing about the coal miners. My father and prac- 
tically all my people were coal miners in south- 
eastern Ohio. In the last thirty years they have 
missed ninety-three possible work days each year, 
not because they were too lazy to work, not because 
they didn’t want to work, but because there was 
no work for them. That situation was true in all 
the bituminous fields. 

In the transportation, mining, and building indus- 
tries the average wage is from twenty-five to thirty- 
five dollars per week. In all the other industries 
combined, excluding these three, the average wage 
is twenty dollars per week. Certainly this doesn’t 
allow for much riotous living. 

Compare these wages with the cost of living, and 
what do we get? The working families of America 
get more than seven hundred dollars less than the 
minimum standard of health and decency; they 
get slightly more than the minimum of subsistence. 
What does this mean? This means that the work- 
ing families of this country cannot enjoy the neces- 
sities and the luxuries of life that you enjoy. It 
means that they cannot wear the kind of clothes 
that you wear. It means that they cannot live in 
the kind of houses you live in. It means that they 
cannot eat the kind of food you eat. It means that 
they cannot have the education that you are getting. 
It means that they cannot enjoy the theater as 
you enjoy it. It means that they cannot even have 
the services of the dentist and doctor that you have 
as a matter of course, without giving a second 


60 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


thought. You might come back at this by saying 
that the workers do enjoy these things, that they 
are extravagant; that some of them do is true, but 
remember when they do, it is always at the expense 
of the necessities of life. It is always at the expense 
of the health and education of their children, and 
it is because the lower class as well as the middle 
class does have the desire for the good things of 
life. - : 

_ These are a few of the facts, and I charge that 
the church does not know them. If the church does 
not know them, it is only to be condemned the more, 
for it has done nothing about them. 

In the third place, I charge that the chureh of 
to-day has no practical program; it has no solution 
for the class struggle; it has a delightful way of 
passing the buck on the issue. The average min- 
ister, if he recognizes it at all, dismisses it in about 
this fashion: “There should be a better understand- 
ing between capital and labor. The worker should 
give an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.” 
These are high-sounding phrases, but they are ab- 
stract, they are up in the air. How shall we get 
a better understanding between capital and labor? 
What is an honest day’s work? How much is an 
honest day’s pay? What answer has the church to 
Herrin, Illinois? What answer has the church to 
Logan County, West Virginia? Did the church 
protest when our supreme court nullified the child- 
labor law? Did the church protest the use of the 
injunction to deny the workers the exercise of those 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 61 


fundamental rights, free speech and the right to 
assemble? 

In the fourth place, I charge that the church of 
to-day, while it is not the direct physical weapon 
that it has been through the Middle Ages, it is more 
indirect, subtle, and perhaps for that reason more 
dangerous as a moral weapon to keep the workers 
satisfied, and as such is demoralizing in its effect. 
In a little unorganized town near my home church 
services are held in a company owned building. A 
little over a year ago that same company built a 
new brick schoolhouse. Can you, can anyone 
imagine the workers under those conditions organ- 
izing and demanding the right to live as men 
should live? 

The whole theory of the ethics of the church, its 
whole code of morals, its whole conception of values 
are sO wrapped up in the present system, are so 
much a part of the present system that it creates an 
atmosphere in which it is impossible to bring about 
a change without making a break with it. The 
church is quick to condemn and slow to understand. 
It is quick to condemn the use of force on the part 
of the workers and it is slow to understand that 
that force is but a natural reaction to the force 
and violence that is being used upon the workers 
all the time. The church is quick to condemn the 
strike and sabotage, two of the best weapons that 
labor has at its command, and it is slow to under- 
stand why it is that labor has to use these weapons. 
The church is always an upholder of law and order, 


62 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


which is to say, in the final analysis, it is an up- 
holder of property rights as opposed to human 
rights, for our laws are laws based on property 
and for its protection. 


QuESTIONS TO Mr. DOWLEY 


Question: Could the church have a program effec- 
tive in a great industrial center for meeting the 
problems of that center? 

Answer: My greatest hope for the church is that 
it create some kind, of machinery to find out the 
facts. I don’t think that the church has a program 
to settle the class struggle. 

Question: I will ask Mr. Dowley if he will state 
what he thinks is the greatest need of labor. 

Answer: I think that the greatest need is that 
everybody should be a laborer of one kind or an- 
other, whether manual laborers or intellectual 
laborers, nevertheless they should be laborers. | 

Question: Do you think the church should favor 
the socializing reorganization of society? Do you 
believe this conference should go on record favor- 
ing a socialist reorganization of society? 

Answer: Well, I don’t expect either. Of course, 
I wouldn’t object to either. I believe firmly that 
Jesus Christ would be opposed to capitalism for 
the reason that capitalism is based on two funda- 
mental reasons; one is the acquisitive impulse, 
instinct or whatever you might call it. I don’t 
believe that Jesus had that. In the second place, 
I think capitalism exists by the use of force, and 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 63 


I don’t believe that Jesus Christ would use force as 
it is being used. 

Question: Do you object to the church as a 
church, or only as it is organized at present? 

Answer: I don’t object to the teachings of Jesus, 
if we had them in practice; but we do not have 
them, and, furthermore, we cannot have them, I 
think, by the means of the church and even by the 
means of Jesus. I think Jesus failed in his day. I 
think he would fail to-day. 

Question: I would like to ask if you think the 
church is the biggest factor in bringing about the 
present condition of the workmen. 

Answer: No, I do not. I think it is a natural 
result of classes. I can’t conceive of a Christian 
society when that society is made up of classes. 
My only conception of a Christian, cooperative, 
brotherly society is one without classes. I don’t 
blame the church for this. The church is more or 
less a product of it, not a cause of it. 

Question: Does the labor group as a group have 
a church which supplies perhaps the same need, fills 
the same need, but goes by another name? 

Answer: I think there is. I have gotten a better 
spirit of brotherhood among working groups, among 
the radical groups than I ever got in the many years 
that I was in this church. I think there is much 
better communion among these people, for the rea- 
son perhaps, although not wholly, that they do have 
this one great common interest which you know, 
taking the entire church group, it does not have. 


64 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


ADDRESS: THE CHURCH AND THE RACE 
QUESTION | 


Miss Mattie Julian 


You have asked me to join to-day that great army 
of men and women who raise their voices high to 
cite the failures of the church, the one institution 
that has brought struggling humanity where it is 
to-day, the one bright star that beckons onward 
and heralds the dawn of understanding, order and 
peace where to-day is confusion, disorder and con- 
flict. Let those who criticize remember that the 
Church of God has never failed. Man’s temple has 
been desecrated with selfishness; man’s church 
established among men has fallen a victim to nar- 
rowness, clannishness, and a blurred perception of 
values, but the Church of God still stands, its por- 
tals ever high, its foundations secure. My plea 
would be that we recognize more clearly that the 
interdependence of mankind is our first concern in 
seeking God. The author of Pilgrim’s Progress saw 
it clearly when, on noticing an unhappy prisoner on 
his way to the gallows, he cried out, “There, but 
for the grace of God, goes John Bunyan!” 

What blood the church has upon its hands! Men 
are lynched at the door of the church while we 
calmly take of the holy sacrament and repeat the 
Apostles’ Creed. We leave to politicians a work 
that belongs to the church. And so the Dyer Anti- 
Lynching Bill, calculated to insure peace of mind 
and safety to thousands of God-fearing men, women, 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 65 


and children, has been heralded from few pulpits 
in this country. It is left to politicians to defeat; 
and millions of our citizens have no protection from 
lawlessness and murder. 

Why is it that many a church can boast of men 
at its head who are Ku Klux Klansmen, anti- 
Semitics, or anti-Catholics, and the like, yet stanch 
supporters and ministers of God? It is because 
the church has lost its real objective. Instead of 
enhancing its perception of values, it has been made 
to fit the prejudices and comforts of man. The 
“Church of God” of which I spoke in the beginning 
still stands out there in the distance far from us, 
emblazoned above its portals the question and an- 
swer that will solve all the ills of the world: 

“Master, what is the Great Commandment?” 

“Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart, and thy neighbor as thyself.” 

Friends, it would be traitorous not to give you the 
message of the intelligent youth of my race. It Is, 
as I see it, just this exhortation: “Let us be honest; 
‘let us either embrace the Great Commandment, or 
cease professing to be followers of the Christ.” 

Young men and women, the intolerances creep- 
ing into our national life must bring to us a tell- 
ing consciousness at one and the same time of our 
potentialities and our future responsibilities. The 
church of to-morrow will be what you and I make 
it. This problem of group relations is a spiritual 
problem, and the church is a spiritual influence. 
The flagrant refusal of the church to-day to assume 


66 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


more definite responsibility for racial intolerance 
and group antipathies challenges the courage and 
bravery of youth. Among the demands of youth 
to-day is freedom from traditional shackles and 
hypocrisies. We demand fair play; we demand 
that our football players shall play the game fairly. 
Will we supply our church of to-morrow with sufii- 
cient strength and courage that it may be broader 
than the narrow confines of hatreds and discords, 
transcend the boundaries of races and nations and 
fearlessly advance toward that ideal of pati 
demanded by the true Church of God? 


ADDRESS: THE CHURCH AND THE MAN IN 
THE STREET 


Mr. Hubert Herring 


It seems to me that the criticisms of the church 
by the man in the street can be grouped under three 
main heads. First, the church is an agency for 
propaganda rather than a free fellowship for spir- 
itual exploration. Second, the church has lost it- 
self in institutionalism. Third, the church has lost 
the spirit of daring and of adventure. These are 
the indictments which are being talked and 
preached from screen and stage, in magazine arti- 
cles and in popular novels, and we might as well 
face the fact that the man on the street, whoever 
he is, is raising questions like these. First, the 
church is an agency of propaganda rather than a 
fellowship for free spiritual exploration. This man 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 67 


in the street sees the Presbyterian Church and the 
Congregational Church and your church lined up 
on Main Street, each of them with its own par- 
ticular thing to sell, at least so he thinks. He 
comes to me and he says: “I am a free moral agent. 
I don’t want to be mesmerized. I want to do my 
own thinking, and I resent it when the church tries 
to get me into an atmosphere where by soft music 
and lovely prayers and by ritual and by sacrament 
and by offertory and all the rest of these things they 
try to create around me an atmosphere which 
cramps me and holds me in and which is calculated 
to make me believe as they believe.” 

On the one hand, against the effrontery of the 
fundamentalist who strips God of his modesty and, 
on the other hand, the innocuous uncertainties and 
negatives of the rambunctious, cantankerous liberal 
who knows nothing and hopes to know nothing, the 
man in the street cries out against all propaganda, 
and cries out, if for anything, for that lost radiance 
of the Christian religion which has liberty and 
which has sweep and depth and the desire to learn 
and the desire to explore the great areas of human 
understanding and of divine power. 

Second, “The church,” so says the man in the 
street, “has lost itself in institutionalism.” The 
lines of the indictment are clear to you. For that 
there have been words aplenty and just words of 
condemnation here. ‘Then the building of local 
structures, the building up of your local budget, the 
building of more costly and more beautiful build- 


68 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


ings come in. So your local church faces three 
things: first, the appeal of the world-wide work; 
second, the appeal of desire to push the church out 
more effectively in America, and, third, the need 
of strengthening the church at home. Out of that 
there come budgets; out of that there comes the 
need for men to raise budgets; there comes the 
building up of drives and promotions. Most of it 
is good, but the danger is that the man to whom 
the task will be given to promote this will be picked 
out because he is perfectly safe, because he has never 
said a word about the steel corporation, because 
he never said a word about the Anaconda Copper 
Company, because he never said a word about open 
shop or closed shop or anything else that makes any 
earthly difference. 

So I say let the church beware of the price by 
which it builds up institutions and organizations. 
Bigness is not greatness. You represent many 
churches here, and big churches, and churches that 
are able to be bigger all the time. What is the 
greatest church in America? If I were going to 
pick the greatest church on the basis of influence 
during the past dozen years, I would pick the small- 
est of the crowd, a church whose badge is a better 
passport in Europe to-day than any passport signed 
by any secretary of state—the Quakers. 

I bid you guard the church against the lure of 
bigness, against the temptation to think that by 
adding hundreds of thousands of members and 
millions of investments it can become great. 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 69 


The third indictment is that the church has lost 
the free play, the daring, the spirit of adventure. 

Who are the perilous element in the church? 
Not the fundamentalists, not the cantankerous 
liberals; they are only little groups, but the perilous 
people in the church are the kind of people in it 
whom you are in danger of resembling, the tired 
people, the weary people, the people who are con- 
tent. The dangerous element in the church is the 
people who lack buoyancy, who have no expectancy 
in their souls, for these are the devourers, if not 
of widows’ houses, of the souls of the prophets, and 
who are always saying: “Why worry? We are con- 
tent, we are rich, we have automobiles and houses 
in Evanston and Oak Park. Why worry? Preach 
the gospel and don’t go wandering around stirring 
up trouble” Those are the devourers of the 
prophets. 

What have you to do with it? The voice came 
crying, “What shall I cry? All flesh is grass and 
there is nothing worth while.” Again the voice 
came, “Cry out against the sterile barrenness of 
the institutionalism; cry out against the cowardice 
and lethargy and weakness of the church. Ory! 
Cry!” 

“But,” says somebody in the back pew, “vou may 
make mistakes.” 

Yes, but far better to make mistakes even in the 
direction of economic insanity, far better to make 
such mistakes even though you go too far than it is 


to make nothing. 


70 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


DISCUSSION 


Mr. Weston, University of Denver: I want to 
bring a few facts from another angle which I don’t 
think was touched very much—the ministerial 
angle. It was my privilege last winter to sit in 
with a ministerial group in Denver, Colorado. I 
think it is tragic that a minister has to be afraid 
that his congregation will not stand for the 
truth. I think they will stand for a lot more than 
the minister believes they will. I am particularly 
concerned about another feature of it, ministers 
who can sit in a group gathering and call each 
other brother when they have hatred and jealousy 
and greed in their hearts. How can we expect any- 
thing of an organization whose leaders haven’t 
brotherly love? : 

Mr. Wyker, Kentucky: I am a preacher. I want 
to back up what Mr. Weston has just said. Last 
night we had pointed out to us the sin of duplica- 
tion, the sin of waste, like a half-dozen different 
churches in a town of one thousand people. I am 
working in such a town just now. I find there, 
with the exception of the young people, it is impos- 
sible to tackle the race problem. It is practically 
impossible to tackle the problem of classes. 

Mr. Rogers, Union: I was very much interested 
in what Mr. Dowley said about the fact that he had 
found more real spiritual experience in the radical 
groups than he had in his previous experience in 
churches. I can’t help but wonder if that isn’t 
precisely what is the matter with the church. Why 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 71 


shouldn’t a church take it as its own duty to 
free these men, the Centralia Wobblies who are un- 
justly held in prison, or why shouldn’t the church 
do something definite about the fact that in hun- 
dreds of towns in this country compulsory military 
training is being put in the high schools and com- 
pulsory military training is being put in the col- 
leges? I want help, but feel we would find a great 
deal of new life perhaps in the church if we took it 
upon ourselves to see to it that the church was a 
fellowship for action and not merely a place of 
worship. 

Mr. Dempster, Harvard: I don’t think that the 
church as an institution can do anything in a large 
way to change the labor or industrial situation, or 
to solve the lay problem other than that of dissemi- 
nation of facts and education. The church, as I 
understand it, as an institution, does not work with 
bodies of people, it does not pass laws, does not 
enforce laws, does not make changes in large social 
groups; it is working with them, but not working 
as individuals. The church is an institution that 
brings individuals to God with their ideas in wor- 
ship, and then tries to transform those individuals 
and their personality, tries to make them realize 
there is a work to be done in the world for man- 
kind, tries to show them what work to do and to 
educate them as to what is to be done. 

Mr. Wilder, North Carolina: In talking with the 
president of a university for Negroes he said, in 
the first place, he was supported by the denomina- 


72 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


tional mission board, but he could not carry on the 
policy which he thought was Christian and remain 
under that denomination, so he had to separate and 
try for free-lance support. I find there that now 
there is no color line whatsoever. The teachers and 
students live and eat together. I found every one 
as an individual and not labeled as to color of skin. 
I have been astonished. It has changed my view- 
point. 

Mr. Rogers, Georgia: Mr. Chairman, I live in 
Atlanta and happen to know of an example where 
the church is doing good work in spreading the 
brotherhood among the races. There is a minis- 
terial association in Atlanta which began during 
the race riot of 1906, I believe. Most of you know 
there was a terrible race riot in Atlanta and blood 
was shed on both sides. Ministers of the town got 
together with the colored ministers and formed 
what is now known as the Inter-Racial Council, and 
that council since that time has prevented two dis- 
turbances from growing into other riots. This 
work is being done actually in Atlanta in that way. 
I don’t see why it can’t be done in other places. 

Foreign Student: We foreign students have come 
to this great country, the greatest Christian nation, 
not only to get our education in your institutions 
of learning, but we have come to see. Remember 
that when we go back to our home lands we will 
not speak of the great institutions you have; we will 
not speak of the great material progress that you 
possess, but we will speak to our people of what you 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 73 


are thinking in this country. If we speak favorably 
about your Christian ways of living, then we will 
promote peace and good will and we will see more 
of Christ, because we have experienced through the 
lives of Christian men what Christianity means. So 
we foreign students hope that you will show Jesus 
more, not only in words, but you must show us in 
your lives. 

Mr. John Gardner, Chicago: I am the student 
assistant in one of the four hundred thousand dol- 
lar churches I heard spoken of this afternoon. I 
have some seven hundred boys and girls in the 
Sunday school every Sunday morning, and in ex- 
amining the life of a boy and girl, I am trying to 
help that boy and girl to form attitudes. I believe 
in religious education we learn to apply our reli- 
gion in race, industry, and the whole of life. It is 
our task to gain teachers of real caliber who can 
help boys and girls do this, and I think we may say 
if we can have larger parishes in America, if we can 
- have in America greater institutions in which there 

are level-headed leaders, leaders who have had full 
experience, then we are going to have a forward 
moving religion in America. 

Student, Fisk University: I want to give a bit 
of information and ask a question.. The information 
I want to give is this: in Nashville we are meet- 
ing what is called the race problem, as evidenced 
by the fact that we have a student forum which 
meets twice every month to discuss racial and reli- 
gious questions, all on the basis of information and 


74. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


discussion. All colleges and universities of the city 
are invited. During the week of Thanksgiving I 
attended a conference at Chattanooga, Tennessee. 
I think the secret of this is the fact that we no 
longer look upon it as a race problem or question, 
but we look upon the things we do and say or the 
things we are doing and saying as being in the 
spirit of Christ. There should be only this one 
question: Is this action or is this work Christ-like? 

Student: We have been considering this question 
from one side. All the speeches we have heard on 
this question have been in favor of working through 
the church and reforming the church. I would like 
to suggest if there is any student here who thinks 
the church ought to be scrapped and that we cannot 
work through the church, we would like to have him 
say so. 

Student: I think that the first thing as students 
we should do is to realize our responsibility to the 
laboring class of the world. The second thing I 
think we ought to do is to get acquainted with the 
laboring people. The third thing we ought to do is 
not fear poverty of material things, but poverty of 
the spirit. 

Miss Childrey, Corneil University: My sugges- 
tion is that we seriously stop talking about Jesus 
quite so much and really study him, try to see the 
principles behind the stories of his life, the situa- 
tion in which he was and the principle he enunciated 
in that situation and try to apply it to the situation 
we are facing. 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 75 


Mr. Kim, Korea: I don’t know whether you can 
understand me, but I will try to explain. First of 
all, I believe in a universal Christian Church. We 
have a Methodist Church or a Presbyterian Church, 
but I believe in Christ the universal church. I be- 
lieve that finally we will have one big Christian 
Church all over the world. 


SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION 


Dr. Albert Parker Fitch: As a group, if I under- 
stand you, you have definitely rejected Mr. Dowley’s 
counsel of despair, and, as I understand the group 
this afternoon, what has been the mental temper 
of it, it has been what I should call—I use the term 
descriptively and not evaluatively—a conservative 
temperament. You have been saying that while the 
church is not doing as well as she might do, she is, 
from your point of view, on the whole, doing so 
well you would not regard for a moment leaving 
her behind or getting out. You have spoken again 
of the divided church, and I judge the temper of this 
audience is very clear upon the scandal and the 
waste of denominational rivalries, perhaps more 
clear on that than on the profound temperamental 
differences and the need of plasticity in human 
organization, which to some extent justify denomi- 
national groups. 

Another thing brought out very clearly this after- 
noon is that you will not face any issue which says 
either, on the one hand, we may have a great hu- 
manitarian faith which shall be able through the 


6 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


best of modern sociology and modern science to 
work from within upon curing humanity’s ills, you 
won't have that, on the one hand, as a sharp issue, 
or, on the other hand, a merely mystical church. 


WEDNESDAY EVENING SESSION 


SPEAKERS: 
Mr. Howard Becker, Student, Northwestern Uni- 
versity. 
Dr. R. E. Diffendorfer, Board of Foreign Missions 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 


ADDRESS 
Mr. Becker 


THERE is no reason why the church as we know it 
need remain what it- has so often been in the past, 
a middle-aged institution run by the middle aged 
for the middle aged. There is every chance in the 
world for a young man or woman possessed of a 
modicum of ability and a little horse sense to gear 
into the organizational machinery in a lastingly 
effective fashion. Look at the gallery. Here are — 
any number of officials of church boards and organ- 
izations who are forward looking and sympathetic. 
If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be up there. I know 
they would be only too glad to be approached by 
some of you who want te work within the church in 
positions which they can help you obtain. 

Let me briefly outline the possibilities of gearing | 
into the machinery, either as a simple lay worker 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 7 


or as One of the professionals. First of all, in the 
local church—your church—if you are to effect 
any change worth mentioning, you may have to begin 
by converting the minister. That is more easily said 
than done, but it is worth trying anyway. You 
may have to use strong-arm methods in the process ; 
but if seeing a few stars will make any of these peo- 
ple into children of light, let’s use the strong-arm 
method. Then there is the chance of teaching in 
what we so often laughed at, but which is a great, 
though neglected field for the youth movement to 
work in, and that is the Sunday school. In its old- 
fashioned form it is rapidly giving way to more 
effective methods and agencies, but it can be 
changed still more rapidly by teachers who are will- 
ing to put up with an antiquated machine for the 
purpose of building a better one. There are any 
number of niches that can be utilized by people 
who really want to act and not talk, as I am doing 
this evening. 


ADDRESS: “THE CHURCH’S WORLD-WIDE 
OPPORTUNITY” 


Doctor Diffendorfer 


Doctor Diffendorfer outlined the geographical extent of 
the church’s interest in foreign countries as listed in the 
Missionary Atlas. He also gave full statistics concerning 
the number of staff members, plants, and the amount of 
money spent per year. 


ee He continued: “That, in brief, young men and 
women, is the thing we are discussing to-night, and 


%8 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


the first point I want to make about it is that it 
stands as the greatest monument of a youth move- 
ment that the church and the world has ever known. 
It was founded by students! Whatever successes 
may have come during this last one hundred years, 
or whatever liabilities this enterprise carries to-day, 
you can just charge it up to the young men and 
women of the student bodies of previous genera- 
tions. 

“What was the challenge of this great movement 
to the students of these days in times past? As 
I read their lives, the lives of Adoniram Judson, 
William Carey, David Livingstone, and Griffith 
John and the rest of them down through the 
years, this is what I find was the thing that chal- 
lenged them in that world situation: first of all, 
there was a lost world and there wasn’t any doubt 
about it. They also had an equal conviction that 
they had a Christ who could save this world. They 
also had a very deep desire to share with the world 
the blessings of our own civilization. These con- 
victions called forth from them the exercise of per- 
fectly tremendous courage and patience. Here were 
the pioneers of the church’s geographical frontier 
and they have penetrated into every last hinterland 
that the world knows geographically. 

“TY would not have you understand that this pio- 
neering is done, not for one minute. I can say to 
you as a body of devoted students when you have 
made up your minds to tackle the problem of bring- 
ing the gospel of Jesus to the six or eight millions 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 79 


of Indians in South America hitherto untouched, 
the chance will be yours to measure up to the 
courage and the devotion and the self-sacrifice of 
these to-night whom we honor. I want to say to 
you when you have determined to break the bonds 
of illiteracy and to banish disease and to set the 
house in order among the eighty millions of Negroes 
in the heart of Africa, some of them living yet in 
impenetrable forests, the spirit of David Livingstone 
will arise among you again. You will go out to 
trek for thirty thousand miles on foot through all 
the years of your life in order that in some dark 
place in Africa the light of God’s love may come; 
that still needs to be done. There is room for every 
one of you to go and preach the gospel to people » 
who have never heard it. 

“Before we dismiss the simple topic of sending 
men and women to tell the gospel story, the sending 
of men and women to teach illiterate minds, the 
sending of men and women to heal the bodies of men 
broken from disease, before we dismiss that idly 
in the face of this perfectly stupendous enterprise I 
have described to you to-night, I want to say to you 
as a missionary secretary that I challenge this 
bunch of youth here to-night to answer this call in 
the spirit of the men and the women who have 
preceded you. 

“But an entirely new set of problems is appear- 
ing as a result of what I have been describing. 
Therefore, we are not ashamed of them; they are 
the natural product of the planting here and there 


80 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


throughout the world of the seeds of the light, of 
the story of brotherhood, the story of sacrifice and 
redemptive love. These problems are due, as I see 
it, to the increased transportation of the modern 
world, to increased communication in the modern 
world, to the development of modern education 
throughout the world, to the spread of the scientific 
spirit throughout the world, to the growth of the 
democratic ideals, based upon an appreciation of 
the sacredness of human personality. 

“One of the new problems is that of national- 
ism. It is manifesting itself, first of all, in men’s 
concern about their country and its destiny and its 
future. In other words, there is a political side to 
it, and it is very strong in some countries. It is 
rising up also in another way which is far more 
important and more fundamental than in the polit- 
ical aspect of it. It is rising up in certain social 
and economic movements. It is saying in some 
countries of the world that no longer shall men and 
nations, by whatever hook or crook they may use, 
become through law and war and through the vari- 
ous kinds of pressure that can be brought upon men, 
exploited for private gain and personalities be de- 
graded in the dust in order that certain nations 
might have gold in their coffers. The fact of the 
matter is men are not going to stand for that any 
more. You might as well give that up. Some of 
you are going to have very great temptations before 
very long when the agents of foreign business con- 
cerns will begin to visit your colleges and begin to 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 81 


enlist you to become the foreign agents. of just such 
exploitation concerns at nice, fat salaries, to go to 
the ends of the earth to exploit private resources, to 
exploit public resources, to exploit natural resources 
and people in order that foreign trade might be 
built up. You are going to have to face that before 
very long. 

“Along with nationalism come race antagonisms. 
There were no such things, no race antagonisms 
particularly among a lot of ‘the early pioneers. 
There were strange adjustments to make, but no 
race antagonisms. As I see it the race problem 
stands to-day as a frontier that is far more difficult 
to penetrate than the trekking through the track- 
less plains and forests of an unknown continent. 
It is an unknown path to us yet, and there are lurk- 
ing along it on all sides the most difficult adjust- 
ments that have to be made and the most difficult 
misunderstandings that have to be cleared away. 

“May I mention another frontier that has come 
and will appear often here?—that is war. May I 
mention another that ought to appear here time 
and again?—it is the philosophy of materialism 
or economic determination. That is a frontier that 
you have got to penetrate, and it will come pinching 
pretty close when we come to match up as to exactly 
what are the motives within us that will drive us 
forward into our own life-work and into our own 
destinies. Will it be the lure of material things, 
according to the ideas of this present day, or will 
we manifest enough power and enough spirit to rise 


$2 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


above it and conquer it and make them become 
means to a great end, the development of human 
personality throughout the world? 

“Tt was not sentiment that was back of the thou- 
sands who have laid down their lives to build a 
superstructure of God’s kingdom throughout the 
world. It was not a twist in the blind move they 
made; no. There was back of it all reason, not 
simply one reason, for intelligence, far-sightedness, 
acumen, preparation, long, long preparation were 
back of it. Then, somehow or another, when it was 
caught up on the wings of religion, and God through 
Christ had come into these men’s hearts, faith be- 
came courageous and the hero was born.” 


QUESTIONS ASKED DocToR DIFFENDORFER 


Question: “I would like to ask a question both 
of Doctor Diffendorfer and of the conference. I 
wonder whether or not this speech doesn’t contain 
a very terrible indictment of missions in two of the 
basic points in the speaker’s address. In the first 
place, he bases the judgment of missions upon their 
size and the amount of money that is invested and 
the numbers of people working instead of by the 
Spiritual results. In the second place, the primary 
excuse for missions is given. as an outworn gospel 
based on the idea that all the world is lost except 
us. I would like to hear some discussion on that 
point.” 

Answer: “Let’s take the second one first; it is 
easier. What I said was what you reiterate. The 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 83 


men who endured this courage and gave this per- 
sonal sacrifice in former days did it because they 
believed the world was lost and because they be- 
lieved they had a Christ that could save them. I 
now challenge you to a rediscovery and a restate- 
ment of that same problem for your day and your 
age. The very fact that you are here and that you 
are finding all of these problems intimates, at least, 
to me that you feel there is something terribly 
wrong with the world. I don’t know whether it is 
lost or not, but there is something terrible the 
matter with it. In this day there is something the 
matter with it, and I challenge you also to find 
whether or not you can find a Christ that will save 
it. : 

“The second one was that it was a terrible indict- 
ment of missions that I should base my estimate 
of them on size. I did not begin to estimate nor 
intend to estimate the spiritual results of mission- 
ary enterprise. I merely said I wanted to give you 
its scope and its size in order that we might see 
what we were talking about.” 

Question: “What is a new motive that could be 
supplied for missions in this day, provided we 
assume the old motive has gone by the boards?” 

Answer: “Just one motive and that is to make 
known Jesus to the world. That is all.” 

Question: “Is it not true that all this great mis- 
sionary work is being carried on by different 
denominations for the main purpose or partial pur- 
pose at least, of furthering their own denomina- 


84 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


tions in those countries, resulting in our having a 
group of different denominations within the for- 
eign nations? If so, what is being done to change 
it and make it simply Christianizing a mission field 
instead of denominationalizing it?” 

Answer: “With few exceptions—and there are 
some very outstanding exceptions—the spread of 
denominationalism does not enter in at all at the 
present time in the foreign missionary enterprise. 
No candidate that comes before our board is asked 
whether he will go to the field and spread Meth- 
odism. I can mention a dozen boards where that 
question is not asked. There are some exceptions. 
I think we are making very great progress in that 
matter. 

“Our goal now is unity and cooperation and a 
delimitation of our fields, so we have neither over- 
lapping nor conflict of any sort. It is definitely in 
front of us, but it is a reasonable question to ask.” 


Discussion 

Mr. Wyker, Kentucky: I think we Americans are 
vain and proud and haughty when we pretend to 
take Christ to the foreign field and do not have 
him ourselves. 

If you don’t think so, talk to our foreign students 
in our colleges. Do we not need to renew or build 
the Christ within our own lives before we promote 
missions? 

Mr. Turner, Illinois: I think the fact that we 
haven’t got light adequately in America is one of 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 85 


the very best reasons why we need in our poor, in- | 
adequate, weak way to try to carry it to other 
nations. All of the great religions of the world in- 
cluding Christianity have come to us from the 
Orient, and we certainly need its interpretation of 
Christianity to-day. I for one do feel that by our- 
selves here in America we can never get that inter- 
pretation of Christianity, and we need all the help 
we can get from our Oriental friends. Foreign 
students have made valuable contributions in the 
last few years, and I think Orientals have much to 
contribute to us yet. I think it is very poor to ask 
them to interpret Christ themselves and not try to 
voice our vision of Christ to them. 

Mr. Harper, Yale: I would like to go to history 
to show that the most glorious periods of church 
history have been those periods where missionary 
enterprise has been most active. I would be in 
favor of a missionary enterprise in our own day as 
one of the means of putting new life into our church 
to-day. 

Mr. Leeper, Allegheny: With the church living in 
the midst of a social order that is based upon a 
plan of distributing rewards according to the 
capacity for getting money rather than the need of 
the individual, we go forth and bring to other peo- 
ple an idea of religion which holds up as its ideal 
a social order founded on the ideal of love and serv- 
ice. 

I challenge the students of this conference to look 
over their budgets or the budgets of the families 


86 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 

from which they come and see whether they are liv- 
ing off of some one else or whether they are restrict- 
ing themselves to that level which would give every 
other one an equal chance. 


Christianizing our Civilization 
THuRSDAY MoRNING, DECEMBER 31 


SPEAKERS: 


Harold Ehrensperger, Student, Garrett Biblical 
Institute. 

Roy Burt, Rock Springs, Wyo. 

Marian Warner, Student, University of Ohio. 

Robert Weston, Student, University of Denver. 


ADDRESS: “UNCHURCHED MASSES AND 
UNCHRISTIANIZED CHURCHMEN” 


Mr. Ehrensperger 


My subject is “Unchurched America.” The ordi- 
nary conception of that phrase is a vast number of 
people who do not belong to any church. We think 
in terms of board secretaries, rescue missions, and 
people who are concerned with saving souls. I am 
going to talk this morning about another kind of 
unchurched America, an unchurched America which 
consists of maladjusted groups, a vast array of peo- 
ple who, whether they are converted or not—which 
doesn’t make any difference—are maladjusted and 
therefore need certain kinds of special treatment. 
I refer to the insane, the feeble-minded, the criminal, 
the inebriate, the deformed, the dependent, and, on 
the other hand, to the groups that are so intelligent 
that they have left the church. They are just as 


87 


88 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


much maladjusted as far as the church is concerned 
as these other groups to which I have referred. 

Let us look at the native stock from which the 
church is to recruit its membership, Only four per 
cent of Americans are of high-grade mentality. 
Thirty per cent of Americans are about as old men- 
tally as an eight-year-old boy. Our national mental 
average is 13.2 years. 7 

We have agreed that the church needs intelli- 
gence; we have agreed from this pulpit that the 
church needs to stress intelligence, in other words 
that the top average, the four per cent of Ameri- 
cans, ought to be ruling the church, but at the pres- 
ent time that is not true. You may make morons 
good, but you will never make them anything else 
than morons by religion. 

Let us look at another maladjusted group, the 
crime group. Since 1850 the population of the 
United States has increased one hundred and 
seventy per cent, and the criminal class has in- 
creased four hundred and forty-five per cent. How 
glibly most of us who have been interested in eco- 
nomic things have blamed this maladjustment upon 
the wealth of the United States. How much we 
have blamed it upon our capitalistic civilization. 

According to Judge Olson, of the Municipal Court 
of Chicago, eighty-seven per cent of our criminals 
are not responsible. In other words, the church 
has been going out to save humanity, it has sent 
rescue missions, it has established all sorts of home 
missionary programs to save these people who have 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 89 


been lost. But have we gone out to find out why 
they have been lost? 

Yes, the church is making a valiant attempt to 
rescue the perishing, but the great mistake, it seems 
to me, has been that the church has supposed that 
the church can make people good. Good people 
make the church; the church does not make people 
good. The germ plasm that produces churchgoing 
people is getting scarce. We must approach the 
matter, therefore, scientifically and intelligently. 
We need a church that will minister to all the 
needs of man, a church that will cooperate in giv- 
ing advice—let us say and frankly say—on birth 
control so we can save some of these people, actually 
save them, so that it will be better that a person 
shall not be born than that he shall be born men- 
tally unfit. 

Have we not, therefore, essentially gone at this 
thing in the wrong way? Is it not, therefore, the 
program of the church to begin a different approach, 
to begin the approach from the point of view of 
social intelligence, to begin with the idea that we 
are facing a situation that must be met by scien- 
tifically interested and alert people? Is it not true 
that the heads of our churches, particularly the min- 
isters, should be alert and aware of these situa- 
tions, and that our home mission boards should be 
more conscious of the social crises which are facing 
us at the present time? 

I said before that the germ plasm which pro- 
duces churchgoing people is getting scarce. I re- 


90 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


peat again that the church does not make people 
good, but that, on the other hand, good people make 
the church. I think I could present nothing which 
you could carry away which would be of more im- 
portance. We need a more intelligent study, a more 
intelligent young crowd, we need young people who 
are willing to investigate facts, which, however un- 
fortunate they may be, must be faced by all of us 
and must be remedied by going at the cause ae 
not the effect of these social crises. 


ADDRESS: “A LOCAL CHURCH MEETING 
COMMUNITY SITUATIONS” } 


Mr. Roy Burt 


There was a time when the program of social- — 
ism and communism made its appeal to me. I know 
what it is to lie on my side in the slime and dirt of 
a coal mine. I know what it is to go through a 
strike. I know what it is to live in a family in 
which the father was hounded from one town to 
another, blackballed by every mining company be- 
cause he dared as a member of the Labor Council 
of that community to insist that the coal mines 
change conditions which endangered the health of 
the community. I have seen my father and mother 
put a few boiled potatoes on the table and go out 
in the back yard while we kids had something to 
eat. So communism and socialism made an appeal 
to me. But there came an ever-gripping conviction 
that the ideal about which Jesus talked of the king- 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 91 


dom of God with the solidarity of all mankind could 
not by any manner of means be based on any pro- 
gram of class struggle and class warfare. 

We are a community of about nine thousand peo- 
ple, located in the center of the largest soft-coal 
field west of the Mississippi River, a community in 
which there are between thirty-five and forty differ- 
ent racial and national groups represented. In the 
coal camps adjacent to this place there are about 
nine thousand more people, making in all about 
eighteen thousand people. 

There are two fundamental principles that are at 
the center of the whole program of the church in 
this community. In its religious-educational policy, 
in its pulpit ministry, in all of its activities. First 
is the conception of the church, that the church is 
simply an agency for the bringing in of the kingdom 
of God. The second is the abiding conviction that 
when Jesus was here he took the most sacred thing 
which the Jew had, which was his Sabbath day, and 
he said concerning that thing, “The Sabbath day was 
made for man, not man for the Sabbath ;” and I 
have a conviction that if Jesus were here to-day, he 
would take the most sacred thing which we have in 
our present social system, which is private property, 
and he would say the only value which property has 
is as it ministers to human personality. 

In our local Sunday school we have seven differ- 
ent nationalities with two or three races repre- 
sented. In my boys’ class I have ag many as seven- 
teen different nationalities, with the Oriental and 


92 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


the Negro race, and there are no distinctions made. 
In our Sunday schools in some of our camps we 
have all sorts of nationalities represented. 

In our church building we have a meeting one 
night a week of men around thirty and past middle 
age, meeting in a labor institute studying sociology, 
economics, labor journalism, fitting themselves for 
leadership. There are to-day literally thousands of 
men who are working through the week and spend- 
ing from one to two nights a week with courses in 
economics and sociology and history, fitting them- 
selves for leadership. They are going to come into 
their leadership, and they are simply challenging 
young men and young women out of the college 
world who, by the way, are the greatest recipients 
of privilege and the benefits of our social order 
of any single group. Churches must recognize at 
once that they do not have a monopoly on bringing 
in the kingdom of God, but they must have the 
honesty, when they see any group that is doing a 
piece of work that brings in the ideals of human 
relationship, to help them, to go with them as far 
as they can go. 

First of all we must help those men to see that 
their ideals of human brotherhood and solidarity of 
humanity rest on the teachings of Jesus. Then we 
have to turn right around and interpret to our 
church that the phrase we so glibly praise, “Thy 
kingdom come,” means the transformation of human 
relationships to-day, and some of us are going to 
have to pay a price for it. | 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 93 


I believe there never has been a bigger oppor- 
tunity in the world than is offered to-day in the 
church for it to accept the challenge to go abso- 
lutely to smash in order that the ideals of the king- 
dom of God may be realized in terms of human re- 
lationship. Let me say frankly that I would rather 
go plumb to smash on the program of Jesus Christ 
and human relationship than succeed on any other 
basis at all. 


THE RACE PROBLEM ON A COLLEGE 
CAMPUS 


Marian Warner 

Miss Warner described the Inter-Racial Council at 
Ohio State University, proposed and carried through by 
Christian students with the cooperation of a local church. 
She outlined how, in the face of considerable skepticism, 
Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, and foreign students were 
brought together in a common fellowship to face their 
common problems. She continued: 

“Two or three very definite results that have come 
from this situation. One Korean boy, who later 
came in touch with our work and with our interna- 
tional forum, came to our university with the 
feeling that he did not want to go any place where 
there was a Japanese student, but he overcame 
that. He had been very closely mixed up in the 
affairs in Korea, and he said: ‘I cannot go where 
those men are. I want to kill them” TI have seen 
him this year, after a few of these meetings, sit 
with these Japanese boys and talk with them just 
as he does with any of us. He seemed to have lost 
that feeling entirely. 


94 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


“One night I was having a committee meeting at 
my house. There were some colored students, some 
white students, and some foreign students. We 
were talking about the different things that had 
come out of this while it was even yet young. A 
young colored man said: ‘I came up from the South 
expecting to find things different here. I had been 
a Christian in the South, but after the treatment I 
got here I decided there were no Christian people 
anywhere, and I was about to give up Christianity 
until I was called into this Inter-Racial Council 
and realized there were a few people on the Ohio 
State campus who were willing to show the spirit 
of Jesus Christ. I have gone back to my form of 
belief and have strengthened my feeling that Jesus 
really means something.’ We have felt perhaps that 
was worth all the effort we have put into this. 

“T could tell you other instances of the same kind, 
but Jet me remind you that this is not yet a year 
old and that we have a great deal to do. It is nota 
perfect organization at all. It is merely a gesture 
in the right direction. We feel that these are the 
things that the church should do. We feel that this 
is the way Jesus wants us to go.” 


ADDRESS: “A CHURCH MEETING A LOCAL 
LABOR SITUATION” 


Robert Weston 
It is my purpose to tell you of the work of a 


church that has an answer to a large part of the 
criticism of the church that we heard yesterday. 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 95 


Eight years ago Grace Methodist Church of Den- 
ver, Colorado, was a dying church. To-day Grace 
Church is rated by the Rockefeller Foundation as 
the outstanding church in the entire region between 
Chicago and the Pacific Coast. Grace Church is an 
organization of autonomous groups. 

The first group is the labor college, which gives 
the working people of Denver an opportunity to 
invest their earnings in study and discussion, that 
gives them culture and self-development equal to 
that which university students are supposed to re- 
ceive. It trains working people in cooperation by 
which they may better stand by the causes which 
labor sponsors. It gives such courses as economics, 
psychology, dramatic art, English, parliamentary 
law, sciences, or any subject which ten or more stu- 
dents request. It charges a fee of two dollars a 
family a semester. It is responsible only to a board 
of directors, elected mainly by union men, and no 
attempt is made to curb the thought or activity of 
either students or professors. In addition to the 
classes, each night the college meets it has an hour’s 
forum on subjects previously chosen by a committee 
of students. 

There is an open forum which is attended by an 
average of about four hundred and fifty people and 
which meets every Sunday during the winter 
months. It is dedicated to the principle that what- 
ever is true will withstand criticism and will come. 
out of attack finer and purer than before. It brings 
outstanding men of every field of work, no matter 


96 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


how radical or how conservative they may be, to 
Denver to present their work and their viewpoint. 

All religious services in Grace Community 
Church are devoted to the promotion of the Chris- 
tian mode of living and thinking. All preaching is 
so planned as to stimulate people to think reli- 
giously without dictating to them what that reli- 
gious thinking shall be, and to stimulate them to 
make their religion one of mutual help and serving 
others as well as self-purification. Social-recrea- 
tional work, such as good motion pictures, active 
game parties, basketball, and so forth, is provided 
for all people from childhood up. Printing and all 
other work possible is done by union men. People 
are reminded once in a while of the need for buying 
goods with the union label. Grace Church took an 
active part in raising three thousand dollars after 
a great tramway strike that a fair investigation 
might be made of the causes and conduct of the 
strike, and the results published. Grace Church is 
one of the few churches which threw themselves into 
the fight to keep Judge Ben Lindsey in his great 
work for the children when the predatory interests 
and the Ku Klux Klan recently made their supreme 
effort to unseat him. 

The young people’s society has a very complete 
program, dramatic, educational and religious, with 
a midweek forum of their own, a Christian service 
program ‘rendering distinct service in the com- 
munity and the city, social, recreational, as well as 
basketball and parties, and Sunday educational, in-— 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 97 


spirational, and expressional meetings. Given the 
idea, any church can do in some measure what 
Grace Church is doing. It is the cooperation of 
working members and working people, most of them 
young, that has made Grace Chureh. The few rich 
members dropped out early in the building of the 
new Grace Church. Its ideals were not theirs. The 
working people of Denver got behind the work and 
made it possible. The working people of any city 
or town will stand with such a program as this 
even though it be very imperfect in its beginning. 
Not only did the rich members drop out when their 
help was most needed, but many pastors of Denver 
churches fought the work. 

Ask any of the union men who have been in the 
thick of the struggle for human rights and welfare 
what they think of the churches, and you will not 
get a very warm response. Ask the same kind of men 
in Colorado, and you will find that Grace Church has 
become to them a real inspiration and help. I be- 
lieve if we are ever going to bring the masses of 
people into the church, it will have to be through 
the methods of this church. 


DISCUSSION 


Miss Dorothy Richards, DePauw: I have gone to 
a church, in fact to several. churches in the cities, 
where the congregation depends upon the kind of 
clothes that are worn. A poor laboring person 
would not dare sit in the back of the church for 
fear of condemnation. Furthermore, I have been 


98 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


asked if I would not cease teaching a certain Sun- 
day school class because it was found that I did not 
believe in the virgin birth of Christ. Again, I have 
just come from a college where the church put on a 
dishonest campaign for building funds. I have been 
dictated to as to what I should believe and as to 
what interpretation I should put upon religion, 
either admittedly in some churches or surrepti- 
tiously in others. I wish we could define the church. 

John Knox, Emory University, Georgia: The ques- 
tion has been asked, What is it that the church pos- 
sesses which qualifies it in a unique way to be the 
instrument through which these social ideals that 
we all have may become realized in our social order? 
There are two things at least that occur to me. 
One is that the church has the historical Jesus; re- 
gardless of what our theories about Jesus are, we 
have the historical Jesus; the church has him, the 
world has him. Then the church has an organ- 
ization. I believe that these two things distinctly 
constitute the church as the agency through which 
those who are interested in bringing in the kingdom 
of God can operate. 

Mr. Bennett, University of Michigan: Christ said: 
“Thou shalt love thy God with thy whole being. 
This is the first and the greatest commandment. 
And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself.” When a man has lived up to 
those two commandments, it seems to me he is a 
Christian, and the great office of the church is to 
see to it that folks live up to them. . 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 99 


Mr. Headrick, Southwestern University, Kansas: 
The church is a national organization owning land 
and buildings, and made up of the clergy, the laity, 
and any other officials that might work in the func- 
tioning units in different communities. If you call 
those things churches and get off of this vague idea 
of the mysticism of the church, we can discuss what 
these individual units can do. 

Mr. Dempster, Harvard: I think the church is an 
institution which exists primarily to nourish each 
individual who comes into it, to encourage him to 
devote his life to the best things that he knows; an 
institution that exists to increase the conviction in 
each individual who comes within its doors that 
life is worth living and that the best life he knows 
is worth living. I think that is the peculiar fune- 
tion of the church. 

Mr. Jenkins, Ohio State: I think we are doing a 
mighty bad thing here if we are locating on one 
side of the social-service aspect of the church, and 
going into the question of industry and racial prob- 
Jems and into war questions and attempting to solve 
them, while we place on the other side, completely 
severed, spirituality and mysticism. The two must 
be linked together inseparably. That is the way 
Christ would work it. 

Miss Carney, Columbia: I should like to say that 
last year I was in religious work in Denver, and I 
found that Grace Church does not have the coopera- 
tion or the sympathy that it should have. Facing 
that local situation of the pastorate being at vari- 


100 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


ance one with another, with no unity among the de- 
nominations at all or among the ministers, how can 
we honestly work within the church? Perhaps it 
is time for a new break to come, and perhaps this 
morning shows some signs of our waking up to some- 
thing of that sort. 

Miss Wray, Mount Holyoke: I wonder if we are 
not saying right here that the church assumes that 
there is a God. What are you going to do with a 
real student who will not assume anything and says 
he has got to find a God, if there is one, for himself? 
The real student will say, “I cannot belong to such 
an organization as that.” Suppose the student says 
it is a compromise for him to go into the church. 
Are we going to say that the church is the only 
organization for him to go into? Perhaps there is 
something else. Perhaps we should scrap the 
church. We are assuming too much that the church 
is the only thing. 

Mr. Kosman, Reformed Church Seminary: The 
point I wish to make is that the church is the 
natural expression of human nature and that it is 
ridiculous to think of scrapping the church. The 
church stands as the expression of man’s hunger 
for God and his hunger and thirst for righteousness. 
Those things are as fundamental in man ag the 
gregarious instinct. 

Further discussion on the subject “Christianizing 


Our Civilization” preceded the addresses of Thursday 
afternoon. 


Mr. Wilder, University of North Carolina: North 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 101 


Carolina has some two hundred cotton mill villages 
and five hundred cotton mills. The people have 
mostly moved in from the country where competi- 
tion has been tremendously keen, and there is prae- 
tically no feeling of community unity, due largely 
to. sectarian churches. The cotton mill people are 
not going to church since they have moved into 
these places, except to occasional revival meetings 
just to let off their pent-up emotions. There is a 
case for missionaries, and I would like to see this 
conference go on record as opposed to any sectar- 
ianism whatsoever in small communities. 

Mr. Helm, Toronto: I should like to add a few 
words to those of the last speaker. At the present 
time I am acting as student pastor in three small 
communities, and I can say quite definitely that the 
church functions in those communities; there is no 
sectarianism. All the people go to church. 

Mr. Wesley, DePauw: I am in a small city, and 
just across the street from the place where I hap- 
pen to be receiving my money there is a large com- 
munity of socialists, they tell me. They never asso- 
ciate with our church. I may be ostracized for go- 
ing over there, but I hope that I may go over next 
summer and spend possibly a day or an evening a 
week getting acquainted with these socialists, these 
radicals, and form some sort of a study class for 
them and help them out by personal contact. 

Mr. McCollom, Washington State Normal: May 
I offer what the school I represent is doing to solve 
these problems? There is a required Freshman 


102 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


course of one year on contemporary civilization, 
based on the contemporary civilization course of 
Columbia. The syllabus has been revised to meet 
the local conditions. , 

The school is located in a farming valley with 
two of the largest coal mines in the State. There 
are a great many outside lecturers brought into the 
school. One man, a Negro lecturer in the town, 
presented to the classes the necessity of studying 
the Negro problem, and they are studying it from 
first-hand information. Another lecturer has come 
in and has discussed the illiteracy problem. The 
county in which the school is located happens to 
have the lowest literacy rate of any county in the 
State. The students themselves are making a spe- 
cial attempt to look into this problem, and a great 
many have offered their services as teachers and a 
great many are at present teaching some of the 
illiterates of the community. 

Mr. Ockenga, Taylor: Concrete data have been 
called for. I am a working student. I left 
Michigan Sunday night. A labor problem had 
created turmoil there, and the religion of Jesus 
Christ transformed that church and left everything 
peaceful. I challenge the statement that was made 
this morning about the church not making good men 
but good men making the church. If good men 
make the church, I want to know how it is that a 
drunkard can come into a church altar and go away 
and drink no more. I want to know how it is that 
a2 woman can come in a Sinner and go away and sin 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 103 


no more. How is it that the church does these 
things if the church does not create good men by 
the divine power which comes from the Son of 
God ? 

Mr. Garner, Western Theological Seminary: I 
had an experience some years ago in Pittsburgh at 
the United Mission on Bedford Avenue just above 
the Union Station—a settlement of all kinds of for- 
eigners, of all religions. We tried there the system 
of having classes in the evening, and we taught the 
foreigners English and the young people manual 
trades. 


SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION 
Dr. Albert Parker Fitch 


You are beginning to see in this conference that 
the best thing that you can do as a body of young 
men and young women who want to attack these 
crucial problems is to utilize, as you do not utilize, 
your opportunities for intellectual advancement in 
your colleges. You don’t know how to think very 
well. You have taken courses in economics, you 
have taken courses in political science, and you 
must have had courses in literature which record 
the feeling and the experience of the race, and you 
can’t discuss these things intelligently. There is 
something that this conference can do toward 
furthering the ethical reform to-day, and that is to 
reform the scholastic situation of undergraduates. 


The Foreign Mission Program of the 
Church / 


THURSDAY AFTERNOON 


SPEAKERS: 
R. A. Doan, Columbus, Ohio. 
J. Levering Evans, Student, Yale Divinity School. 
Y. T. Wu, Student, Union Theological Seminary. 
Rachel Childrey, Student, Cornell University. 


ADDRESS 


SHOULD THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE BE 
CONTINUED? 


Mr. R. A. Doan 


THIS question cannot be answered by “yes” or “no.” 
A vote here to-day would reveal a diversity of opin- 
ion which would doubtless favor the continuance 
of some kinds of missionary endeavor and the aban- 
donment of others. Suppose, without any prelimi- 
naries, we first recount some of the accomplish- 
ments of this vast movement which has for its 
avowed purpose the lightening of the load which 
all mankind is carrying. 

1. What are some of the things the enterprise we 
have miscalled “foreign” missions has been doing? 

Originally the basic motive which carried Chris- 
tian foreigners into other lands was the belief that 


104 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 105 


the messengers possessed a truth of God which 
would revolutionize the world spiritually. A vast 
number have been sent out (and a few of that kind 
are still going) whose conception was largely that 
of an invasion into lands as evangels of a great 
truth, seeking converts. They were to “preach the 
gospel” everywhere. This was commendable and 
they were pioneers in unselfish service and real 
heroism for Christ. But they failed to conceive at 
first that they went as seekers of truth which these 
other peoples possessed. Out of this beginning, 
however, there came slowly the realization that 
those of every nation had something to contribute 
spiritually and intellectually to every other nation. 

Upon this realization whatever of condescension 
or superiority there may have been in the original 
decision to go disappeared from the heart of the 
true missionary. 

As the program and the necessary support were 
enlarged less and less did the going of the mission- 
ary depend upon a personal decision only. In addi- 
tion to consecration there must be qualification for 
specific tasks. Then the enlargement of the under- 
taking has created a supporting body back of the 
missionaries that has often been dictatorial, fre- 
quently denominational, and almost always theo- 
logically harmful. To the nationals of other lands 
especially do I want to say that I believe the mis- 
sionaries, for the most part, would have attempted 
little that might be termed partisan had they been 
unhindered by their supporters. Even now we find 


106 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


great boards in America instructed by their consti- 
tuency to enforce curtailment of liberty and to re- 
quire subscription on the part of their adherents 
to creeds or practices or ceremonies demanded by 
each particular body. Dogmatic legalism, which 
sometimes passes for Christianity, still stalks 
abroad in missionary work. Are we to “fence in” 
the intellectual and religious area beyond which 
love cannot go? Not soon shall I forget the 
agonized cry of as fine a soul as I have known in 
all the world when he, a deeply spiritual Latin- 
American Christian, said to me in Uruguay last 
summer, “Why don’t the denominations in America 
pool their resources and just send Christians down 
here to South America who will seek to place Christ 
into the Christless Christianity of this continent 
and who will leave their denominationalism at 
home!” ee 

Let us not minimize or forget the good done by 
Christian missions. I have no more right to con- 
demn Christianity because of some unlovely theo- 
logical hair-splitting Christian than I have to judge 
Hinduism by the Indian Sadhu at a mela in Benares 
who seems to me the embodiment of filthiness and 
repulsiveness. Rather would I know Hinduism by 
some of its fine, spiritually-minded followers who 
do not depend upon outward appearances to declare 
their renunciation of evil. More justly would I 
evaluate Christianity by the life of one who really 
exemplifies Christ. 

Another thing which must not be overlooked in an 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 107 


inventory of Christian missions is the fact that we 
do not live in the same world that existed when 
the migration of Christian missionaries began. That 
is self-evident to those of you whose vision is world- 
wide. But there are many in the church to-day 
whose Christianity has been static through the 
years. That the cumbersome machinery of absentee 
management has failed to adjust quickly to the pro- 
found change of national and international ideas 
and outlook cannot be questioned. But it does not 
follow that because of this inelasticity, this failure 
to change quickly from the autocratic to friendly 
cooperation, Christianity in nations where the 
church is new should ignore or discard everything 
coming from the heritage of the old. 

It is true that the application of Christ’s teach- 
ing and life must be made to meet conditions that 
vary widely in each country and among different 
peoples. The result will not be standardized Chris- 
tians who will actually think and believe alike. 
God forbid. But surely, unless Jesus was a false 
teacher, there will be something deep down in the 
lives of his followers everywhere that will identify 
them as members of a common body—without refer- 
ence to ceremonials, or any particular catechism or 
creed, or any theological formula. 

We may safely conclude, therefore, that we are 
honest only when there is an open-minded acknowl- 
edgment that the missionary program as now pro- 
jected and conducted does not meet the need of the 
hour. Having so concluded, it remains to consider 


108 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


if there are ways in which Christians in all lands 
may discard traditions and inconsequentials and 
present Jesus as the world’s Saviour. 

2. What are a few of the essentials involved in 
the continuance of missionary endeavor? 

There must be an absolutely honest purpose on the 
part of the organizations in America and elsewhere 
and the missionaries who go that the latter shall 
become simply the assistants over there of those 
who represent Christ in their own countries. There 
must be no ecclesiastical or theological test of those 
who go out to aid in making the world Christ- 
centered. To set the limitations in advance beyond 
which the church shall not go in these lands where 
Christ is just emerging is to proclaim our belief in 
the incompetency of God. This means that de- 
nominationalism and theological partisanship must 
die. 

Last night an earnest question was asked from 
the floor about the dissemination of denominational- 
ism in what we call the foreign field. The answer 
from the platform was to the effect that the board 
here represented never asked a missionary candi- 
date whether he would go out and be a partisan or 
a propagandist for that particular denomination. 
But may I say to you in kindness that in spite of 
that statement, the truth of which I do not for a 
moment question, the representatives of that de- 
nomination do go out as flaming evangelists for that 
particular denominational body. I say to you from 
personal observation through the years, that I be- 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 109 


lieve denominationalism to be the greatest sin of 
Christendom, denominationalism as it exists to-day. 

Iither we must join the Christians of the world 
in presenting a free Christ who may work without 
man-made interpretations or we must compel Christ 
to begin anew with a broken group as he did when 
Judas misrepresented him. This means, then, that 
we have come to the hour when the expanding influ- 
ence of the church throughout the world is dead- 
locked unless we may go forward in a united way. 

Having concluded that all is not well in present 
missionary endeavor, and having suggested certain 
broad lines which seem absolutely essential if we 
are to proceed successfully, let me speak more 
directly of the personal responsibility of those of 
you assembled here in this conference. 

It is possible to be too impatient in these chang- 
ing days. May you pause long enough to observe 
that there is a host of us who join you in much of 
your dissatisfaction with things as they are and in 
much of your crusading spirit. May we not all 
counsel together in seeking to discard all which is 
obstructive and in salvaging that which has borne 
or may bear the test of time. 

Allow me to outline in a sentence or two the posi- 
tion to which I have gradually come. I hail as com- 
rade every lover of the truth, of whatever religion, 
but to me Jesus Christ is supreme. I recognize the 
good in every man who seeks to make a better world 
and I join with him as we fight together against evil, 
keeping clearly before me the supremacy and com- 


110 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


pulsion of Christ’s life and personality. I see in 
him the only true Saviour, and I acknowledge no 
other Lord, but I believe he works through those 
who do not know him, as well as through those who 
know him much better than I, and I question no 
man by the way. I wish we might pledge ourselves 
together, with all our diversity of opinions about 
many unimportant matters, to give ourselves with 
great abandon in an effort to interpret Christ to a 
disheartened, discouraged, and suffering world in 
this hour of suspense. If we attempt to do this, we 
must prove him to be a tolerant, loving, yearning 
Christ and not a controversial zealot. That is no 
easy task in face of the present criticism of the 
church, much of which is just. 

Somehow I cannot help feeling that our Father 
looks down upon us to-day, with our sin-sickness, 
immaturity, incapability from all human stand- 
points of meeting this situation which we have out- 
lined here during these days, and that he would, if 
he could, say to us: “Give a good account of your- 
selves. My strength is sufficient.” 


ADDRESS: “WHY I AM GOING TO THE 
MISSION FIELD” 


Mr. J. Levering Evans 


May I speak just a minute as a member of the 
conference and as a member whose only qualifica- 
tion to speak in this capacity is as one who has an 
intense desire that each one of us shall in this con- 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 111 


ference get deeper than ever before into the reality. 
Therefore, just for a few moments I am going to ask 
us to do just a little bit of introspection. To start 
that, I am going to ask a question. Are we satisfied 
that we as individuals have done everything in our 
power to get as near to the source of this universe as 
we can, admitting that if one could get near the 
source of the universe, we would see better how to 
work in this universe? 

Here is where the point of my going to the for- 
eign field comes in. I do know that in Christ’s inter- 
pretation of God I have come nearer to this source 
than through any other method. There seemed to 
be something very literal in the fact that the truth 
Shall make you free, as Christ has presented it. You 
probably say, “What has this to do with foreign 
missions?” I can tell you just this, it is very 
simple. It is because there are fewer people where 
IT am going who can tell other individuals who are 
struggling for the search of truth about Christ than 
there are here. 

In regard to this contact with Western civiliza- 
tion, you know my primary purpose for going. The 
secondary purpose is to help in any way I can along 
any other lines. The line for which I feel myself 
‘most fitted is in the line of the study of the labor 
problem. I feel that the industrial revolution in 
some measure is coming in the world, and the ques- 
tion is, is it coming as Christ would have it come, 
or is it coming without Christ in it? 

In the third place, I feel in regard to this inter- 


112. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


national Christ that I have a very concrete example 
that will help you as it helped’ me. I had courses 
in college dealing very strongly with the question of 
environment and heredity, and I began to wonder 
whether Christ and the spiritual growth would be 
real to another national. I was sitting on the banks 
of a river that runs by Shanghai, during a chapel 
period talking with a friend of mine, a Chinese. 

fe were cutting chapel because we wanted to get 
together on the problems that were facing us. He 
had been studying the religion of his father and 
mother, mostly Buddhism, I believe, and he was tre- 
mendously in earnest and tremendously perplexed 
as to the relative values. I tell you frankly I don’t 
know what prompted me to bring up this point of 
Christianity, but I asked him what he thought of 
this: “He that loseth his life for my sake shall find 
it.” He turned around and said: “I know what you 
mean. That’s what I have been looking for.” Then 
we Started in as two people on the same road, and 
we understood each other better than many of my 
American friends. We had gone through some of 
the same spiritual experiences and found that 
Christ brought us nearer to the eternal than any 
other agency. 


ADDRESS: “SOME CRITICISMS OF MISSIONS” 
Mr. Y. T. Wu 


What I am going to do now is just to summarize 
for you very briefly some of the criticisms that have 
been made on the missionary enterprise. 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH § 113 


I think I can summarize the criticisms under three 
heads. The first point is that the missionary move- 
ment in the Oriental countries has been a forced 
growth. Somehow Christianity has been forced on 
China and other Oriental countries. It has been 
taken to China by the point of the sword. If you 
compare for a moment the way that Buddhism has 
entered China with the way in which Christianity 
has entered, then you will find that the Chinese have 
sent missionaries to India in order to get Buddhism, 
but Christianity was imposed on China by force, by 
treaties, by special privileges which are the result 
of military domination of the Western nations. 

Another reason why we think that the missionary 
movement in the East is a forced growth is the way 
it has been established. The missionary movement 
has made more use of material resources than any 
other things. It has relied more on money, on build- 
ings, and has emphasized statistics more than other 
things which are characterized by spiritual calm. 
It is just numbers and size that you find as the 
strength of the missionary movement in the East. 

The second part of the criticism is that the mis- 
sion movement has ignored the culture of the 
Oriental countries. The missionaries coming from 
the so-called civilized countries naturally have gone 
to the Eastern countries with a certain degree of 
superiority complex. Then, again, the uniqueness of 
the Christian religion has made the missionary 
think that Christianity is the way of life, the only 
way under the sun in which people can be saved, 


114. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


also that to know this way and to know it as the 
Western people do is the right thing in disregard of 
whatever things the Oriental people may have. 

I am going to suggest a few changes or ways in 
which this situation can be improved. First, I 
would like you to consider this question: Is there 
any real message in Christianity? After we have 
come into contact with these countries and know 
the culture and civilization, do we still believe that 
the message in Christianity is unique, and in what 
way unique? Can you still believe that nobody can 
be saved in the orthodox sense without knowing 
Christ? And how can you imagine a country like 
China with five thousand years of civilization, with 
all the great men, the great sages, who could have 
existed in all the peace and comfort of life without 
knowing Christ? I am not going te answer these 
questions for you, but I would have you think over 
them and work out your own answers. 

The second suggestion that I would make is this: 
Is our whole Christian institution on the right 
track? I would point out to you that it is not a 
right thing, even if such an institution has worked 
well in Western countries, to duplicate it in Oriental 
countries; and how much worse it is if it does not 
work well in your own countries! 

The third point that I would like to make is the 
faoture of the mission movement. I would venture 
te say that the day of the missionary movement in 
its original sense is gone, that a missionary going 
to other countries as boss and teacher is no longer 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 115 


needed nor welcomed, that there are enough native 
leaders in the countries who could take up their own 
work in their own way without having the help of 
the missionaries. I suggest to you that instead of 
having our missionaries going out as they are going 
out now, we should exchange Christian workers. 
What I mean is that instead of having a one-sided 
process of one nation or one set of nations sending 
their missionaries to another set of nations, the 
process be made mutual, so that not only America 
will send the Christian workers to China, but China 
will send the Christian workers to help you work in 
America. | 

I have made this suggestion because I think that 
every nation has some contribution to make to the 
universal truths which we all must recognize, and 
that without these we cannot hope to have a uni- 
versalized Christian gospel which will meet the 
needs of all people. 

For myself, in spite of the anti-Christian move- 
ment that has been raging in China during the past 
three years, it is still my strong conviction that 
China no less than the rest of the troubled world 
needs the gospel of Christ, and also that without the 
contribution of the East and the West, the rich- 
ness and fullness of Christianity cannot be realized, 
but that the way in which Christianity should be 
_ expressed and lived, the institutions and organiza- 
tions that should be established, and the way of 
interpreting Christ, toward these things the foreign 
Christian workers can help, but the way in which 


116 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


they should finally be worked out should be mies et 
in the hands of the Oriental people. 


FOREIGN MISSIONS REPORT 


Miss Rachel Childrey of Cornell University pre- 
sented the report of the Foreign Missions Commis- 
sion. (See Findings, p. 193.) A part of the fol- 
lowing discussion related to that report. 

Mr. Smith, Union Theological Seminary: I should 
like to speak as one hoping to go out as a mission- 
ary. 

Missions, whatever they may have been, are not 
now a youth movement; they are a middle-aged 
movement, and if we can find a way of increasing 
the influence of youth, both on the foreign boards of 
this country and on the other side of the water, 
almost all of these things which are in this report 
can be accomplished; and if we cannot have that, 
few of them can be accomplished. 

I think it is true that few mission boards are pre- 
pared at the present time to give a man any assur- 
ance as to the country to which he is going until 
he is practically at the end of his preparation. I 
think that a modification at that point would be of 
immense significance. Also, there is this rule in 
many boards, a very extraordinary rule in the past 
which actually delays the influence of young men 
on the mission field. They get to the mission field 
and for a considerable length of time they have no 
vote in mission organizations. 

I would like to speak now of the other side of the 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 117 


water. I find that the main difficulty with mis- 
sionaries on the field is not their relationship with 
the Christian Church, but their relationship with 
the people outside. It is very difficult to persuade 
any group of people, either liberal or conservative, 
to take an active part socially with the Oriental 
people. I have worked at it in certain places, and it 
has brought certain results; but the tendency is the 
other way, and I am sure that if this increasing 
influence of youth on the other side and on this side 
can be brought in, much of that will be solved. 

Mr. Masa, Taylor University: I would suggest 
that you Western students, students from America, 
instead of taking your graduate work in Europe or 
in some universities in America, go to some 
Oriental universities and live side by side with 
some of the Oriental students. If you want to bring 
Jesus Christ into the hearts of the Oriental people, 
you will be more able to interpret to them the teach- 
ings of Jesus Christ or of Christianity in that way. 
J invite you American students to the Orient, to any 
university in Japan, China, the Philippine Islands, 
or India, to live side by side with us so you may be 
able to know our social customs and live as our 
Orientals live. 

Mr. Cranston, Union: Since the thirtieth of May 
many missionaries have not stood with the Chinese 
in their struggle for justice, but have been quite 
willing to side with their governments, especially 
one or two European governments, in upholding 
those governments regardless of consequences, with- 


118 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


out thinking what is the thing that Christ himself 
would probably do under those circumstances. 
Christianity ought to stand against imperialism. 
Unquestionably there is too much truth in the state- 
ment that certain individual missionaries have not 
always done so. 

All of the fine pretenses in here about getting to 
know Oriental students and listening to them in this 
country would sound a great deal better in this con- 
vention if we had a larger number of Oriental stu- 
dents here. With the exception of three or four 
students from the Philippines, and Mr. Wu, the 
number of Chinese, Hindus, and Japanese here is 
almost negligible. 

When you talk about these things on the campuses 
of your colleges, consult the Oriental more 
thoroughly and see that he has a larger place in such 
conferences as this. We will be richly the gainers 
to practice what we preach in that respect. 

Mr. Carino, Garrett Biblical Institute: My 
friends, if you would only let the theological prob- 
lems stay in your homeland and fight among your- 
selves with them and let the missionaries be free 
to form an organization of Christianity that would 
be for the best, then I am sure the foreign work 
would be successful and that Christianity and Jesus 
Christ would be exalted above denominationalism. 

Mr. Kim, Garrett: I came to America about a 
year ago or a year and a half ago, and I know about 
the Korean missionary situation. In Korea the 
Methodist Episcopal Church and the Southern Meth- 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH’ 119 


odist Church wanted to unite. We have a union 
seminary between the North and South. Our Korean 
conference between the Northern and Southern 
Methodists voted to unite, and we wanted to have 
one union church, but your American home mis- 
sion board did not vote entirely for this union. We 
also wanted to unite between Methodists and Pres- 
byterians. Our Korean folks who wanted to unite 
did not know why they separated, but they knew 
Christ and they liked the idea of the union. They 
did not know about the sectarianism, because the 
Korean mission field is too young; it is only forty 
years old now. 


THURSDAY EVENING 
SPEAKERS: 


Mr. Thomas Que Harrison, New York City. 

Mr. Howard McCluskey, Instructor, University 
of Michigan. 

Dr. Ashby Jones, Atlanta, Georgia. 


ADDRESS 
Thomas Que Harrison 


We are all hunting. It does not matter whether we 
are Christians or non-Christians, youth to-day is 
hunting for a way of life. We want to know, it 
seems to me, a philosophy about the religion of Jesus 
that will satisfy our intelligence and a fellowship 
with Christ that will give us a self-respect and 
power to follow him in his program; and, we also 
wish to know the mind of Christ for his church in 


120 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


our generation, a program that will stand the test 
of race and war and industry and the other denials 
of his way of life in our civilization to-day. 

I wonder if I can personally confess that since I 
have come to this conference I have taken stock and | 
I have discovered that I am not in any real and 
sincere way devoted to Jesus Christ. When we are 
in trouble we pray for help. When we are lonely or 
discouraged or overburdened we ask for help, and 
we get it. But how many of us (and I will say this 
for myself) are living in any spirit of devotional 
exercise daily, in any spirit of asking, “What would 
Jesus do if he walked in my steps day by day?” 

My friends, let us start with our own lives, let us 
say that we will keep fellowship with the masses of 
humanity by denying ourselves a standard of living 
which is that of luxury. Let us say that we will 
begin to live in the spirit of sacrifice, and that we 
will share with our brother, and that we will make 
the church open to the masses of humanity. Let us 
protect ourselves against that insidious temptation 
that chokes out the idealism of every youth of eigh- 
teen or twenty or twenty-five so that by the time he 
has got to be fifty he becomes a coward and a com- 
promiser because he doesn’t want to suffer or to feel 
that his wife and children should feel the pinch if he 
is thrown out of a job. 

I talked with a man in Baltimore who said to me, 
“Young man, I have seen many come before me with 
the flame of an ideal, and inside of a year give up 
the struggle and betray it; and I am wondering if 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 121 


one year from now you too will have succumbed to 
the temptation.” 

if the church is going to cut out mammonism, we 
in the church, whether we are laity or ministers, 
must begin with ourselves. Then we should intro- 
duce a lay ministry and we should send men and 
women to the mission field as Paul went out. I 
want to say that just as soon as we try to clean 
mammonism out of the Church of Jesus Christ, just 
so soon are we going to be opposed, are we going to 
be burdened, are we going to be tempted to the very 
marrow, and that very process will drive us in upon 
each other and upon God. If the Christian Church 
dares to gird herself with the heroic task of build- 
ing the Kingdom on earth, she will be driven upon 
her God and she will find him, and in giving up 
riches, in giving up popularity and becoming ac- 
cursed and outcast and persecuted, if necessary, she 
will find fellowship with labor, with the masses of 
humanity that Jesus associated with and built the 
Christian Church upon. She will find fellowship 
with youth. 

There is a Rockefeller Foundation report about 
the youth of the Christian campuses of America. 
That report is this: That after thorough investiga- 
tion throughout this country to-day, eighty per cent 
of the young people who come on the college campus 
have lost all vital contact with the Christian 
Church. 

To-day youth is withstanding terrific temptation, 
moral temptation, and in some cases succumbing to 


122. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


it, and youth to-day in America is being flooded with 
a paganism of self-indulgence, and the only way for 
us to get hold of youth and keep youth in the church 
in any vital way is to offer to youth the heroism and 
the courage of the program of Jesus, the kingdom of 
God on earth, absolutely transforming all human 
relationships in the spirit of brotherhood, making 
war and race friction and industrial conflict impos- 
sible, transforming society both personally and in 
the group, and bringing in the thing which he 
promised to his disciples if they would dare to at- 
tempt it. 

You heard our Chinese friend this afternoon, but 
suppose that we in our Christian Church and as _ 
citizens of America standing on a Christian plat- 
form absolutely stand out against race disrespect, 
against economic imperialism and against the war 
question, and then go to China and receive Chinese 
here as friends. If we have practiced friendship 
and brotherhood, we can preach Christ, but if we 
refuse to practice brotherhood, it is blasphemous to 
preach Christ. To-day, whether in the foreign field 
or at home, the only way we can preach Christ is 
to practice brotherhood in the name of Christ. 


ADDRESS 
“Mr. Howard McCluskey 
As your chairman has indicated, because of the 


fact that I am connected with one of these iniquitous 
institutions that you have been hearing about, a 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 123 


university, I will speak as an outsider, not as a 
professional religionist. My job does not take me 
into religion as a profession. I am interested in 
religion as an avocation. 

I have been asked to evaluate the major activities 
of young people’s work in our churches in connec- 
tion with the educational viewpoint. 

The first suggestion I want to make is in con- 
nection with the program for devotional education. 
It seems to me that as now constituted the devo- 
tional program for young people’s work is not ade- 
quate. I do not have in mind the old type of devo- 
tions that we used to think of, but it seems to me 
that the whole devotional scheme should be reinter- 
preted and put upon a new basis. For instance, 
why wouldn’t it be possible instead of depending 
entirely upon the Bible for devotional literature, to 
use the better literatures of the world in terms which 
young people can understand? Why is it necessary 
always to have audible prayer, for instance? 
Wouldn’t it be better to organize devotions some- 
what along the lines that the Quakers organized it, 
along the lines of silent prayer? And why wouldn’t 
it be a good plan to put the social reference, the 
horizontal reference, aS well as the vertical refer- 
ence, in our devotions and try to get a mystic com- 
munion with the individual spark in the soul of 
every person as well as the soul of God? 

Some of you perhaps wonder what that has to do 
with religious education. Let me make that expla- 
nation. Practically all of the psychologists in the 


124 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


last twenty-five years have been making a desperate 
attempt to try to understand human nature, and 
after having analyzed consciousness in many of its 
various aspects, they seem to get a pretty good de- 
scription of what goes on in a person’s mind; but 
the one thing that psychologists cannot understand 
adequately and the one thing that is constantly a 
mystery to all psychologists and students of human 
nature is to find out what it is that makes people 
move and do things. 

Let me say that it is just as much a scientific fact 
that the religious motive is perhaps the most 
dynamic force in the world as it is a fact that there 
is a chemical reaction when you put two chemicals 
together in a test tube. Furthermore, we.are begin- 
ning to recognize that at this tender age of youth 
is the preeminent time, if it ever is going to be 
done, when young people are taught to reach and 
find those greater reservoirs of strength which will 
enable them to carry out the program that you have 
heard outlined to you in speeches. 

Most of my evaluation of educational methods as 
now used will concern itself mainly with summer 
institutes and young people’s meetings, and con- 
siderable of what I will say will be somewhat pessi- 
mistic; but in order to avoid any misunderstand- 
ings I want to pay a tribute to the educational 
progress in summer conferences made within the 
past five years. 

The condition is not as hopeless as I perhaps will 
indicate in a few minutes. Whatever you do and 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 125 


whatever despondency and despair you may have 
about the success of this conference, as a person 
looking in from an educational standpoint, all I can 
say to you is, for heaven’s sake don’t give it up. 
If you can’t do anything else, at least do this much. 

Those of us who have been following these con- 
ferences in the summertime have been impressed 
with the futility of much of this conference work. I 
happen to have access to one of the most interesting 
investigations that I know of going on with respect 
to the attitude of youth, the student opinion on war. 
I have some advance data on that investigation. 
One of the most striking conclusions as a result of 
that investigation is this point, that in the theoreti- 
cal aspects of that problem the youth are willing to 
go a long way, a surprising long way, but in the 
practical aspects of that problem they go not half 
so far as you would expect them to go. In other 
words, there is a wide gap between theory and prac- 
tice, and those of us who have followed these con- 
ferences from time to time have recognized that the 
people in these conferences are actually talking 
about spiritual dynamite if they ever began to apply 
it to common affairs. 

Those of us who have been anxious to see some 
action taken have been impressed with the futility 
of these conferences. Let me try to analyze why I 
think there is a certain amount of futility. Prac- 
tically every discussion and every conference ends 
with the question, “What are we going to do about 
it?” In terms of specific behavior, what are we go- 


126 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


ing to do about the problem of war and the press, 
the Negro and the labor and capital problem? The 
reason there is an air of futility in these discus- 
sions and forums is that we can’t answer that ques. 
tion. We don’t know what we are going to do 
about it in terms of specific behavior. 

The reasons are two: First, we have no facts, 
Our knowledge is pitifully inadequate. Second, we 
have not tried anything. No one has lived through 
the situations involving these problems. No one 
has had to suffer because of beliefs on these prob- 
lems. We have no precedent, we have no experience 
in Christian living. The reason we get no further 
is that no one has anything to contribute in terms 
of concrete daily personal experience, and we will 
always go just half way. We will always be nothing 
more than verbal acrobats, inane religious dilet- 
tantes. We will be nothing more than half-baked 
Christians until some one tries something different, 
until some one risks possessions and public esteem, 
until some one experiments with Christian life on 
a Christian basis. 

Every young people’s society, therefore, shoal 
be a laboratory for Christian living, and every con- 
ference (get this, because I think it involves a funda- 
mental change in technique) and meeting should be 
a place for the exchange of experiences and the 
interpretations of significant samples of life, a 
gathering of new facts and an assembly of a new 
series of realities. For instance, let’s be specific; it 
would be a splendid thing if an organization head- 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 127 


quarters would gather and promote the production 
of case studies in Christianity, the like of which you 
heard here this morning. It would be a magnificent 
project to accumulate instances where people have 
successfully overcome old grudges through the spirit 


of love, how misunderstandings have been overcome 
through exercise of the law of the second mile, how 


some bitterness between student and instructor or 
some rancor between roommates or some nasty feel- 
ing between fraternities or sororities or campus fac- 
tions was dissolved through the spirit of kindness. 
Why wouldn’t it be desirable to describe in some 


detail, as we describe in social psychology case 


studies, for instance, of how some white students 
went about securing invitations for colored students. 
to a college prom, or how the discrimination of a 
hotel proprietor against colored folks was overcome 
through the spirit of brotherhood, or how some 
warm-hearted youth thawed out the congealed 
prejudice of some Southern friend by putting him 
into sympathetic association with some fine young 
man of the colored race? Wouldn’t that be a de- 
sirable thing to accumulate a large number of 
samples and case studies of that nature? Why 
shouldn’t we have the details of instances of how a 
group of young folks, fearless, went home and 
stumped the home town during vacation against 
isuch things as the high school R. O. T. C.? Why 
shouldn’t we organize and agitate for an era of 
demonstrated Christianity, and why wouldn’t it be 
splendid for headquarters to formulate programs in 


128 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


terms of jobs to be done instead of outlining the 
year in terms of meetings, speeches and hot-air con- 
tests, where everybody talks about that which he 
knows least of? Why not outline each year in 
terms of specific items of behavior? Why not have 
a project Christianity, as we call it in education, 
instead of a gas-bag Christianity? 

The religious educational program is not organ- 
ized nor conceived in project terms. Look over the 
programs of summer conferences. In most instances 
the programs are on a speech-sermon-address basis. 
More recently conference programs are giving place 
for active, widespread participation in discussions, 
but the art of discussion leading is still to be 
mastered. Furthermore, more dependence is placed 
upon speech-making than discussions. Finally, most 
of the conferences have no background of informa- 
tion or experience. I am not speaking of experi- 
ence in terms of maturity, age. I mean experience 
in terms of Christian living. How much reliable 
information and knowledge about war and the labor 
problem, the Negro and the immigration problem is 
brought out or can be brought out in a conference 
of a week or ten days? How much can a group of 
youths talk and discuss these problems when their 
lives have had no contact with them except through 
hearsay and prejudice? The limitations inherent in 
the very short period of the usual conference (I am 
beginning to get specific again; you have been cry- 
ing for specificity) might in part be overcome by a 
preconference preparation and study of the prob- 








YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 129 


lems at stake in the conference, by the circulation 
of literature telling about it and asking them to 
study it. In ail the data I have been able to collect 
and assemble I have found not a single instance of 
where the members attending the conference are 
expected or stimulated to make anything like a 
thorough preparation for the issues that are bound 
to occur. That is a specific suggestion. 

Let’s evaluate the young people’s meetings. The 
two major activities educationally are the institutes, 
conferences like this, summer and midwinter, and 
the young people’s meetings throughout the year. 

If you look over the topics of the Christian En- 
deavor, B. Y. P. U., and the Epworth League, you 
find in some cases as much attention to Methodism 
or denominationalism, as the case may be, as to 
these broad social problems. Then, again, in young 
people’s meetings we meet much the same difficulty 
that we do in the summertime, inasmuch as there is 
too much emphasis upon speech-making and not 
enough emphasis upon discussion; but much worse 
_ than this is the fact that the materials that are pre 
sented in a course of a half year of young people’s 
meetings are fragmentary and disconnected and 
oftentimes erroneous, and inasmuch as there is vir- 
tually no preparation nor any background of fact, 
no serious study of the problem, it is no wonder that 
the discussions are bound to be superficial and de- 
plorably inadequate. 

Furthermore, the usual technique of young peo- 
ple’s work as now conducted in summer conferences 


130 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


and young people’s meetings disobeys what the psy- 

chologists call the law of exercise. Once a week at 

most, according to the present scheme, is given over 
to this type of thing. Preparation for the meeting 
is superficial. The outcome of the meeting involves 

little or no obligation in conduct. Hence, from 

interrupted, desultory, listless training we expect 
to develop a series of virile, intelligent Christian 

attitudes. 

Did Coach Hawley of Dartmouth train his foot- 
ball team with a perfunctory half-hour drill on late’ 
Saturday afternoons? Does a cross-country runner 
train on a half-hour’s practice when the mood 
strikes him favorably? Does a law student or a 
medic or a Ph.D. candidate pass his rigid examina- 
tions on a perfunctory thirty-minutes-a-week fort- 
nightly schedule? Can the youth of the Christian 
Church of America hope to contribute its share of 
the redemption of modern society when its present 
training consists of ten days’ training once every 
one or two years and a listless thirty minutes every 
week? ' 

When young people get in the habit of think- 
ing in terms of concrete realities, we will have a 
much better type of education than we have at the 
present time, and when we take the step that one 
of the leading men in Christian work at the present 
time took last year in canceling all of his speeches 
and devoting an entire year to study by himself in 
order that he might better prepare himself for his 


speech-making and his student contact, when we 





YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH § 131 


also take the attitude of the students who go to 
these industrial summer experiments in these indus- 
trial centers like we did at Detroit with the 
Michigan men last year, and put our lives upon an 
experimental basis, then we will have a right to ask 
questions, then we will be equipped to get some 
place; and when we regard our lives as a laboratory 
experiment, and when we regard life as a creative 
adventure in aggressive good-will where we are the 
subject in the experiment and the spirit of love and 
the spirit of Christ is the control in the experiment, 
when we begin to conceive of life in those terms and 
we begin to organize the education of young people 
in those terms, then we will be able to answer the 
question, “What are we going to do about it?” 

We need to create new patterns of living, we need 
to create a new form of life in Christian life, we 
need to come above the stage of mere dilettantism 
and being mere dabblers in religion, above the Ten- 
Commandment level to the level of the Sermon on 
the Mount, and if we can regard all young people’s 
work as a tremendous cooperative experiment in 
Christian living, then we will reach the basis for a 
new society, then we will be performing our func- 
tions as Christian young people. 

Some one may call this a dream, but when we 
want to do a thing bad enough and when we have 
coupled with it constructive imagination and a de- 
-vouring passion, and when we begin to combine that 
with intelligence, dreams are realized under those 
conditions. 


1382 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


THURSDAY EVENING 


- DiIscussION 


Mr. Jenkins, University of Chicago: One of the 
speakers the other day, speaking on the question of © 
war, I think, hit the nail on the head when he said | 
that the attitude of the church largely has been that — 
war is a terrible thing, but for heaven’s sake don’t © 
do anything about it. 

I should like to ask a question or two here. I 
want to ask, for one thing, when we are going to 
face the question of R. O. T. C. training squarely. — 
I have seen something of R. O. T. C. training my- — 
self. I had it in high school, in summer training 
camp, in college. It is only recently that 1 have 
waked up to what it is. If there is anything on this 
earth that I am sure of, it is that R. O. T. C. train- 
ing is one of the things that leads more than almost : 


any other factor we have into war. I don’t think — 
that you can get a group of young men at the age of — 
‘high-school students and give them bayonet train- a 
ing day after day and work them up into the frame 
of mind where they are encouraged to visualize a 
man before them when they go through the drill 
without getting them into the frame of mind where 
‘war is a natural result. They don’t want war; they 
‘appreciate how terrible war is, but their whole men- 
tal process is geared to a point where war is natural 
when the situation comes. 

It has frequently been defended on the ground of 
physical training. Thateis all bosh. There is only 









YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH § 183 


one purpose, which is military training. I should 
like to know whether we believe what we have been 
saying, and whether or not we are coming to a point 
or will come to a point where we are not only say- 
ing that war is wrong, but we are willing to do 
something about it. 

Student, Northwestern: I arise to address this. 
convention as a Christian, and as a Christian I am 
mindful of the fact that there is an omnipotent 
God, and that God in his kind mercy has chosen 
to place us in a world not as he might have done, but 
in a world where strife and sin are. That God 
exemplifies Jesus Christ where we find love. 
I agree heartily with all that can be said against 
war. I as a Christian can conceive of no case in 
which it is not a terrible sin to go into war, but the 
point comes up in time whether or not it may not 
be a greater sin not to go to war. If the time ever 
comes when we must go into war to protect our 
institutions or see them smitten, then I say we 
‘should go into that war with men who are capable 
: of leading other men to a fight which will not sacri- 
fice them needlessly as was done in the last war, and 
we should have our warehouses stocked with such 
things that will enable us to help the wounded. In 
the base hospitals in France in the last war they 
went weeks and weeks without a drop of antiseptics. 
I stand as a Christian gentleman, proud of the 
'-R. O. T. C. of our land, proud to say that if we have 
to face that problem again, as men of Christ we can. 
go in and put ourselves into a fight to win. 











— 


184 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


Mr. Ripley, Ohio State: I have seen a little of 
war, and no one can ever tell me that any war is_ 
justified. It is wrong, and nothing that you can say 
ean make it right. 

The R. O. T. C. cannot make officers, and it seems 
to me that this last war should certainly have taught — 
the folly of sending young men with a high regard 
for the salute and close order drill and no other 
knowledge of things military than that into the 
trenches to lead men. They can’t do it. 

The R. O. T. C. is wrong for this reason: It makes _ 
passive militarists of men. They put you in the. 
frame of mind which will cause you to not object to. 
war, in which you will say that war is inevitable 
and we must prepare for it. They do it in this way 4 
With their pretty blue uniforms, their trick swords, | 
and the bayonets (out of alignment), their spurs, 
their parades, you get the idea that war is a pretty 
thing, that you parade with a band leading you. 
You never see the bands in war. The band is es | 
into litter bearers, stretcher bearers. 

That is why the R. O. T. C. is wrong. It makes 
passive militarists. 

Mr. Wilson, Columbia: It seems to me there are 
three questions which are typical of problems which 
we as young people face. The first is the R. O. T. C. 
and the military training system of the War De- 
partment. The second is the proposition before us 
of universal conscription which takes away from a 
man in advance his right to pass on the justice of 
participation in war. Third is the mobilization of 


mae Sal eel ie eel 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 135 


industry which is now being carried on by the War 
Department, with preferred and secret contracts, 
with a guaranteed rate of profit, and all that that 
implies, 

To return just a moment to the R. O. T. C., be- 
cause that is the one issue which faces us most 
Squarely as students, what can we say of this system 
which intimidates students and faculties when at 
one university in the Middle West the colonel of the 
R. O. T. C. comes to the Y. M. C. A. secretary and 
says, “You shall not have discussions in the Y. M. 
C. A. on war or peace,” when in a city college the 
faculty voted whether compulsory military training 
_ should be continued, and fifty-four voted that it 
Should be continued, sixteen that it should not, and 
thirty-nine were not voting, some of the thirty-nine 
not wanting to vote and others not having made up 
their minds, and some of the fifty-four coming to the 
students and apologizing to them that their case 
was unanswerable but they could not vote with 
them? What sort of system have we that intimi- 
dates faculties to such an extent that they cannot 
vote as their opinions direct? It means the per- 
petuation of the war system, reaching down into 
the high schools. 


ADDRESS: “THE REAL DYNAMIC OF THE 
CHURCH” 
Dr. Ashby Jones 
It is the vogue to-day to criticize the church, and 
I think that nothing is quite so heartening as the 


1386 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


fact that those who are members of the church are 
becoming our most intelligent critics. Nothing to 
- Ine is quite so hopeful as a gathering like this where 
~ you have found out that the thunderbolts neither 
of God nor of the church itself would strike you 
if you stood up and frankly told your objections to 
the church. 

Back of all the criticisms, perchance, there is this. 
feeling in the minds of us all, that with the varied 
differences and divisions of Christianity, both as to 
denominations and divisions within denominations, 
Christianity to-day cannot deliver its full tide of 
strength at any given moment upon any given sub- 
ject. I don’t mean so much that we cannot speak. 
the same words. God grant that the day never shall 
come when we shall speak the same words or think 
the same thoughts or bow at the same time, but 
there should come a time when with a oneness of 
spirit and with a passion for a common purpose, 
we might deliver the full strength of Christianity 
upon some forward movement for the world. | 

For myself, it has seemed very significant that 
while Jesus never left a model creed for all of us to 
sign, he did leave a model prayer. I say significant 
because, after all, prayer is the very essence of 
any man’s religion, because in one’s prayer he re- 
veals in the address the God whom he worships, and 
then in the petition the dominant desire of his own 
heart. While churches and denominations are dif- 
fering in policies and rituals and creeds, all the 
churches repeat “Our Father who art in heaven,” 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 137 


and “Thy kingdom come,” and “Thy will be done on 
earth.” Wherever that prayer is uttered in sincerity 
we have the spiritual seed concept that shall one day 
produce a harvest of spiritual unity in Christendom. 

My beloved friends, to my mind here is definitely 
the function of the church in the Christian world 
to-day and always. The church is to make a Pente- 
costal experience for man. So far from holding to 
the forms of the past, so far from insisting upon the 
ancient traditional vocabularies of the past, so far 
from defending a religious language, to my mind 
the highest function of the church is to translate 
the spirit and teaching of Jesus in every generation 
and in every tribe and in every tongue, the living 
language upon the lips of men. 

I have wondered sometimes if we haven’t tried to 
narrow the commission by making it geographical, 
if we haven’t thought that when we go around the 
physical earth in some mystical way we carry the 
Kingdom around. You might put a church on every 
hilltop and in every valley around the world, but not 
until the religion of Jesus had learned of the vocab- 
ulary, not simply of all the nations of the world but 
had learned to speak in terms of commercial, of po- 
litical, of industrial life, of racial problems, not until 
we had a Pentecost and until the employee could 
hear the employer talk, Christ’s spirit in his tongue, 
until men facing each other with their differences in 
life could find those differences melting within the 
Spirit of Christ because they speak the same lan- 
guage, would Christianity come. 


The Cooperative Work of the 
Churches 


F'ripAY MORNING, JANUARY 1 


GREETINGS From THE UNITED CHURCH OF CANADA 


Mr. J. C. Torrance, Student of the University of 
Toronto 


Vury briefly, I want, first of all, to give you a word 
picture of that great, vast assemblage of people who 
gathered together at the consummation of Canadian 
Church Union. It was held in a great athletic arena 
in Canada. There was a great sea of eight thou- 
sand or nine thousand human faces sitting there, 
reverentially in devotion, in silence. In the calm 
of that hour they felt, as never before, how abso- 
lutely trivial had been the things that divided them 
and how supreme and how great were those things 
which united them into one common cause. 
Promptly at ten-thirty there emerged from the 
three entrances at the back of the arena three 
streams of delegates representing the Presbyterians, 
Methodists, and Congregationalists. They gradually 
came down, merging into one stream—three great 
living streams merging into one real, vital living 
stream that was thereafter to be one corporate body 
for the furtherance of God’s kingdom in the coun- 
try. | 
The representatives of those three great denomina- 
138 





YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 139 


tions laid down or presented in words the offering 
of their respective denominations. There were the 
sturdy independence of Congregationalism, the 
dignity and love of order of Presbyterianism, and 
the fervor and evangelical zeal and enthusiasm of 
Methodism fused and united together at that great 
meeting. Perhaps one of the greatest moments was 
when those eight thousand or nine thousand de- 
voted people partook of the sacrament. The bread 
and wine were passed. In one moment every per- 
son there partook of the bread, and the next mo- 
ment every one partook of the wine. 

Why did we feel union was necessary? I think 
it was this: there was a growing conviction among 
Christian men and women in all denominations that 
the business of sectarian strife and jealousy was 
something we should put behind us, and go out and 
do the real work with a united front. 

A couple of real benefits of the union are these: 
spiritually, we have realized the fellowship that has 
never been realized before among our denominations 
in the country. We have asserted the imperative 
right to readjust our creeds and doctrines in the 
light of new revelation and in material waste. We 
have economized on men and money, on unnecessary 
duplication, May it be the sincere and the real 
passion of every individual here to go out from this 
conference into whatever field of activity they may 
be, with a prayer in their hearts to make real and 
try to fulfill that prayer of our Master, Christ, that 
they all may be one. 


140 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


REPORT OF STUDENT COMMISSION ON THE 
COOPERATIVE WORK OF THE CHURCHES 


What we have long hoped for has been at least 
partially realized. The churches of America have 
definitely entered into the field of cooperative action 
for the accomplishment of the kingdom of God upon 
earth. The church has developed a corporate con- 
science within recent years that is making for an 
ethical and moral solidarity among the Christian 
forces of the nation. Many of the denominations 
have seen the folly of a divided counsel. They see, 
likewise, the futility of a divided offensive against 
the social unrighteousness of the present day. 

The urge of a common task has Jed many of the 
larger and more influential church bodies of America 
into a comradeship of cooperative action that is 
truly remarkable. This venture of the churches into - 
the realm of practical unity is known as the Federal 
Council of the Churches of Christ in America. 
Organized in 1908, the Federal Council has grown 
both in strength and in influence until to-day it 
represents one of the most promising developments 
of our American church life. The manner in which 
the Federal Council operates for the advancement 
of a Christian world-order will be stressed through- 
out this report. 

The Student Commission on the cooperative work 
of the churches, consisting of nineteen students 
representing nine denominations and twelve educa- 
tional institutions, met in New York City in the 
office of the Federal Council of Churches, November 
20-21. There appeared before the members of this 
Commission the Executive officers of twelve organ- 
izations, and of seven commissions of the Federal 
Council of Churches. 

This report will present a very brief outline of 
interdenominational cooperation with respect to 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 141 


international peace, industry and social service, mis- 
sionary activities, race relations, and education. 


I. INTERNATIONAL PRACE 


There are two organizations connected with the 
church which work tirelessly for a Christian inter- 
nationalism : 


1. The Commission on International Justice and 
Good Will of the Federal Council of the Churches of 
Christ in America. 

2. The World Alliance for International Friend- 
ship Through the Churches. 


The Federal Council’s Commission on Interna- 
tional Justice and Good Will is made up in part of 
representatives of the various denominational peace 
committees. This Commission has recently ex- 
panded its program and now furnishes secretarial 
leadership for the enlistment of all ages and groups, 
both men and women, for the promotion and attain- 
ment of world peace. 

We desire to call the attention of the Conference 
to “The International Ideals of the Churches,” 
adopted by the Fifth Quadrennial meeting of the 
Federal Council, in Atlanta, Georgia, December, 
1924; 


1. We believe that nations no less than individuals are 
subject to God’s immutable laws. 

2. We believe that nations achieve true welfare, great- 
hess, and honor only through just dealing and unselfish 
service. 

3. We believe that nations that regard themselves as 
Christians have special international obligations. 

4, We believe that the spirit of Christian brotherliness 
can remove every unjust barrier of trade, color, creed, 
and race. 

5. We believe that Christian patriotism demands the 
practice of good will between nations. 

’ 6. We believe that international policies should secure 
equal justice for all races. 


142 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


7. We believe that all nations should associate them- 
selves permanently for world peace and good will. 

8. We believe in international law and in the universal 
use of international courts of justice and boards of arbi- 
tration. 

9. We believe in a sweeping reduction of armaments by 
all nations. 

10. We believe in a warless world, and dedicate ourselves 
to its achievement. . 


We believe that these ideals represent the most 
advanced step yet taken by the churches in their pro- 
gram for world peace. We call upon our denomi- 
nations to cooperate faithfully with the Federal 
Council’s Commission on International Justice and 
Good Will for the universal application of those 
principles of world peace and brotherhood. 

This Commission has been active in the campaign 
for American adhesion to the World Court. It has 
labored for fair treatment of the Japanese and other 
Orientals. It cooperates each year with the Chau- 
tauqua Institute for a series of lectures on Interna- 
tional Relations From the Christian Viewpoint. It 
publishes a most valuable type of literature bearing 
upon all phases of the general subject of Christian 
internationalism. It voices the conviction of the 
church with respect to disarmament and the move- 
ment for the outlawry of war. | 

The World Alliance for International Friendship 
Through the Churches is an international organiza- 
tion of religious forces with National Councils in 
many countries, including America. This organiza- 
tion carries on a promotional type of campaign in 
all lands and seeks the development of a world con- 
science on the part of the churches against the war 
system. 

We heartily indorse the work being accomplished 
by these and other church agencies in behalf of. 
peace. Yet we do feel that there is need for a closer | 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 143 


cooperation between these peace organizations and 
commissions, and, if possible, unification. 

We recommend the following specific proposals as 
steps toward the establishment of peace, to be under- 
taken by the churches in their interdenominational 
capacity: 

1. The entrance of the United States into the 
World Court. 

2. The entrance of the United States into the 
League of Nations. 

3. The removal of discriminatory legislation in 
our immigration policies. 

4, The elimination of compulsory military train- 
ing in our schools and colleges. 

5. The elimination of the war emphasis from our 
school textbooks. 

6. The promotion of universal disarmament. 

7. The discontinuance of the so-called “Defense 
Day Tests.” 

8. The cultivation of a Christian world-minded- 
hess among the adherents of our several churches. 





We recommend that the individual churches 
through the denominational agencies give loyal sup- 
port to these and to other endeavors in behalf of 
peace. We of the younger generation feel that our 
nation should not stand aloof from the rest of the 
world on the basis of the Monroe Doctrine or by 
virtue of a speech once made by George Washington, 
but should come forth whole-heartedly and make 
its contribution toward the solution of these inter- 
jnational problems. 


II. Inpustry anp Socian Service 
The Federal Council of Churches, through its 
Commission on the Church and Social Service, has 
adopted the following platform of Social Ideals: 


144. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


1. Equal rights and justice for all men in all stations 
of life. 

2. Protection of the family by the single standard of 
purity, uniform divorce laws, proper regulation of mar- 
riage, proper housing. 

3. The fullest possible development of every child, espe- 
cially by the provision of education and recreation. 

4, Abolition of child labor. 

5. Such regulation of the conditions of toil for women 
as shall safeguard the physical and moral health of the 
community. 

6. Abatement and prevention of poverty. 

7. Protection of the individual and society from the 
social, economic and moral waste of the liquor traffic. 

8. Conservation of health. 

9. Protection of the worker from dangerous machinery, 
occupational diseases and mortality. 

10. The right of all men to the opportunity for self- 
maintenance, for safeguarding this right against encroach- 
ments of every kind, for the protection of workers from 
the hardships of enforced employment. 

11. Suitable provision for the old age of the workers, 
and for those incapacitated by injury. 

12. The right of employees and employers alike to or- 
ganize; and for adequate means of conciliation and arbi- 
tration in industrial disputes. 

13. Release from employment one day in seven. 

14. Gradual and reasonable reduction of hours of labor 
to the lowest practicable point, and for that degree of 
leisure for all which is a condition of the highest human 
life. 

15. A living wage as a minimum in every industry, and 
for the highest wage that each industry can afford. 

16. A new emphasis upon the application of Christian 
principles to the acquisition and use of property, and for 
the most equitable division of the product of industry that 
can ultimately be devised. 


We are in hearty accord with these principles. 
It is our desire that the churches of America, in 
their various interdenominational activities, shall 
attempt the transformation of human society in 
conformity with these ideals. To this end, the 
Federal Council’s Commission on the Church and 
Social Service has been carrying on a commendable 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 145 


and energetic campaign within recent years. This 
Commission, in voicing the indignation of Prot- 
estantism against the twelve-hour day in the steel 
industry, helped mightily in the abolition of this 
economic enslavement. It is interesting to note that 
in this matter, as in some others, there was close 
cooperation between the Federal Council of 
Churches, the National Catholic Welfare Council, 
and the Central Conference of American Rabbis. 


More than 125 conferences have been held 
throughout the country under the auspices of this 
Commission, for the study of labor conditions. Both 
employers and employees were represented in all 
these industrial “get togethers.” 


This Commission investigates industrial condi- 
tions from time to time and exerts its influence for 
conferences and for a just. settlement of disputes. 
It carries on a campaign in the churches for the 
elimination of child labor. It is concerned with 
child welfare and with the problems of delinquency. 
It has encouraged the wide observance of “Labor 
Sunday” and has supplied many pulpits with 
speakers upon labor themes. 

We commend such activities and offer the fol- 
lowing suggestions: 

1. That the Federal Council’s Commission make 
certain that its work is not a duplication of work 
already being done by other Social Service Bureaus 
or Commissions. 


2. There is need for a study of the attitude which 
the American Federation of Labor now holds con- 
cerning the church’s interest and action in labor 
affairs, with the view of effecting a closer under- 
standing between religious and labor groups. 


3. More churehes in America should conduct 
Forums where conditions in the economie and in- 


146 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


dustrial world might be thoughtfully and fearlessly 
discussed. 


Ili. Muisstonary ACTIVITIES 


There are a number of interdenominational 
agencies that are functioning for the advancement 
of the church’s missionary program. Foremost 
among these is the Foreign Missions Conference 
of North America. Through this body the various 
denominational foreign missionary bodies are able 
to achieve many cooperative activities. This Con- 
ference is an integral part of the International Mis- 
sionary Council, which includes in its membership 
the various national and continental groups. Co- 
operation in missionary enterprises is thus made 
possible on an international scale. 

The Committee on Cooperation in Latin America 
acts as the clearing house for the denominations 
having work in that general area. The religious 
life of Mexico has been greatly advanced through 
this interdenominational activity. The allocation 
of territory to the various missionary boards and 
the establishment of union schools for educational 
purposes speaks volumes for the effectiveness of 
this program. 

The Federation of Woman’s Boards of Foreign 
Missions of North America is composed of 23 Ameri- 
ean Boards, 4 Canadian Boards and 4 interdenomi- 
national groups. The Council of Women for Home 
Missions is doing a splendid piece of work in pro- © 
moting a follow-up service among the immigrants 
and in introducing them to some church of their 
choice in the community in which they settle. 

One of the greatest advance steps has been that 
taken by the Missionary Education Movement. This 
agency publishes missionary textbooks for all the 
denominations. It likewise promotes interdenomi- 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH =§ 147 


national institutes for the creation of a public opin- 
ion favorable to missionary enterprises. 

The Commission on Relations with Religious 
Bodies in Europe of the Federal Council of Churches 
is a medium through which the churches of the 
United States assist in the reconstruction of Euro- 
pean Protestantism. 

We believe that, in so far as the Protestant 
churches of Europe are concerned, the denomina- 
tions should be willing to work through the churches 
already established in this field. 

We strongly urge, in all foreign missionary 
centers, the establishment of indigenous churches. 
We should still cooperate financially with these 
native churches, but should increasingly place the 
responsibility of executive amd administrative 
leadership in native hands. 

We believe that there is a great need for the closer 
integration and possible amalgamation of all these 
interdenominational agencies carrying on mission- 
ary work. 

There is need also for some sort of a research 
and information service that could be intrusted with 
the task of interpreting the new science of mission- 
ary activity to the general public. 


TV. Race RELATIONS 


Among the peoples of the different races and reli- 
gions in the United States there is a decided lack 
of adjustment, which manifests itself in discord 
and conflict. Because of this situation there is 
exhibited social and industrial injustice that is not 
in keeping with the teachings of Jesus. 

In the presence of such a situation it is evident 
that the church nust take some stand. The Com- 
mission on the Church and Race Relations of the 
Federal Council of Churches has attempted to meet 


148 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


this problem in the shaping of public opinion. This 
has been done by means of literature, interchange 
of pulpits, work in elementary schools, and the 
establishment of interracial committees. The Com- 
mittee on Good Will Between Jews and Christians 
has arranged Union Thanksgiving services, Open 
Forums, and Student Meetings. The Council of 
Church Boards of Education has secured the co- 
operation of Jews and Christians on matters of 
religious and moral education. 

We feel that this work is an effort in the right 
direction, but it is just a beginning. 

We believe that the church should continue to 
bend every effort to create harmony and good will 
among men. We are unconditionally opposed to 
the Ku Klux Klan and other organizations which 
have attempted to use the Protestant Church as a 
shield for their unchristian activity in stirring up 
prejudice. 

The work of education in such eed should be 
emphasized. We feel that such organizations are 
outgrowths of ignorance and misconception. The 
work of enlightenment should be carried on among 
the mass of the population as well as among the 
college students. | 

The Federal Council’s Commission on the Church 
and Race Relations has conducted in recent years a 
series of interracial conferences. The constructive 
measures adopted at these conferences by the local 
white and colored leaders augur well for the future. 
Interracial committees have been set up in many of 
the larger cities of the country, including Brook- 
lyn, Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Dayton, Kansas 
City, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Saint Louis, and 
Toledo. 

This Commission has carried on a successful cam- 
paign against lynching. It has inaugurated Race 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH © 149 


Relations Sunday. On this day, in certain 
instances, White and Negro pastors exchange pul- 
pits and joint interracial mass meetings are held. 

It is especially recommended that the church 
remove any existing racial segregation within itself. 
We believe that such an act would have definite 
effect on the economic and political life of our 
country and would go far toward removing race 
prejudice. 

We believe that this program can be successfully 
carried out only by means of interdenominational 
cooperation. 


V. EpUcATION 


One of the most effective means of securing a 
higher standard of moral and religious education 
not only in the local community but also in the 
college center is by placing greater emphasis upon 
interdenominational cooperation. 

It is interesting to note that at the University 
of Iowa a school of religion has been established 
which has as its purpose the training of leaders 
for religious activity in their home communities 
after graduation and return from college. Prepara- 
tion for work in Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish 
centers is taken into account. At the University 
of Missouri there has been established a student 
religious council which is composed of representa- 
tives from all of the denominational groups on the 
campus. In East Lansing, Michigan, the Congre- 
gational Church in the town has been converted 
into an interdenominational church and now has 
serving as members of its governing board Baptists, 
Methodists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians. 
This church, while financially supported by these 
denominations, is actually being operated by the 
students of the several denominations. At the Uni- 


150 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


versity of Pennsylvania an interesting experiment is 
now in operation, where each denominational repre- 
sentative is specializing in a particular field of 
activity. 

All of this is very fine, but it is limited to a very 
few isolated experimental stations, and as a result 
the large majority of our church population is not 
affected by its work. 

We recommend the wider use of week-day schools 
of religious education, based upon interdenomina- 
tional cooperation. In many communities the local 
School Board is ready and willing to cooperate 
with the churches in promoting week-day schools 
of religion. However, the various denominational 
groups in the locality too often are jealous of one 
another and are not willing to enter into an agree- 
ment for interdenominational religious education. 
The next move seems to be up to the leaders of the 
church in the local communities. 

The interdenominational Daily Vacation Bible 
School movement for summer programs has already 
proved its worth. We desire to see a further exten- 
sion of these schools in more cities and towns of 
the country. 

There must be a vital strengthening of the reli- 
gious education departments in our denominational 
colleges. There is also a further need for a higher 
type of ministerial leadership in college communi- 
ties. We recommend that, wherever the conditions 
warrant, student pastors be assigned to college 
centers and that they be properly recognized by the 
administrative authorities. 

The various denominations should raise the stand- 
ard of ministerial education. A college education 
or its equivalent should be a prerequisite for ad- 
mission to all theological seminaries. The curric- 
ulum should be continually changed to meet new 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 151 


conditions, and field work should be given a promi- 
nent place in the program. We should also like to 
suggest that all seminaries offer a four-year course. 
In the schools that are now operating to prepare 
non-college men for the ministry we desire to see a 
more adequate curriculum and teaching force. 

It is important to note, in conclusion, that all of 
these suggestions can be realized only through inter- 
denominational cooperation. The International 
Council of Religious Education and the Council of 
Church Boards of Education are the two interde- 
nominational organizations working in this field. 
We believe that there is room for much closer co- 
operation between these two boards. We suggest a 
thorough study concerning the possibility of actual 
unification. 


GENERAL FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 


We have had brought to our attention the two 
world movements that are now at work on the prob- 
lem of church union: The Universal Christian Con- 
ference on Life and Work and the World Conference 
on Faith and Order. 

The former hopes for a far greater unity within 
Christendom along lines of practical endeavor. The 
latter is concerned with the doctrinal aspects of 
reunion. The Universal Ohristian Oonference, 
which met in Stockholm in August, 1925, really 
achieved something worth while. It brought to- 
gether into practical fellowship the Protestant 
churches of America, England, and the Continent, 
together with the churches of the Eastern Ortho- 
dox faith. The Conference issued a pronouncement 
on social and international questions, the first inter- 
national declaration of its kind in the history of the 
Christian Church. The World Conference on Faith 
and Order meets in Lausanne in 1927. The divi- 


152 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


sions of the church with respect to faith, doctrine, 
sacraments and orders strike at the very heart of 
the entire question of church unity. We express our 
hope that the Churches of Christ will be able to 
find some way of escape out of the ecclesiastical 
confusion of the present hour. 

Stockholm and Lausanne! The youth of America 
hails with genuine thanksgiving these movements 
toward the ultimate unity of the Christian Church. 
We feel that the church, in these efforts, is facing 
toward the future. 

We do not believe, however, that the time is yet 
ripe for the erasing of our denominational lines. 
We look forward to a continually growing spirit 
of federated cooperation, keeping ever before us 
the ideal of ultimate unification. Toward this end 
it is to be greatly desired that denominations of the 
same church family shall effect an organic unity 
among themselves as a stepping-stone in this evolu-- 
tionary process of church union. Even though the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church have failed in their efforts 
for unification, a failure which is to be deplored, yet 
we see in these and similar efforts a ray of hope 
for the future church. We look with enthusiastic 
interest upon the movement in Canada which has 
resulted in the merger of three denominations in 
the United Church of Canada. 

We deplore the present controversial condition in 
the Christian Church and feel that it advertises the 
church in the wrong light. We believe that the solu- 
tion of this unhappy situation is to be found 
through an open-minded approach to the principles 
of Jesus, which will result in a strong adherence 
to one’s Own convictions combined with a tolerant 
attitude toward the honest convictions of others. 

We commend most heartily the work of the Fed- 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 153 


eral Council of the Churches of Christ in America. 
This organization is indispensable to the religious 
life of America and to the progress of Christianity 
in our own and other lands. Its interests and activi- 
ties cover the whole range of our religious life, indi- 
vidual, social, and international. We would like to 
see. every denomination in America a constituent 
member of the Federal Council and giving it en- 
thusiastic support. 

As the natural development of this cooperative 
principle, we recommend the organization of State 
and City Federations of Churches where such insti- 
tutions do not already exist. We desire to see our 
Roman Catholic friends invited to participate in all 
united church programs, even though they may 
appear at times to be hesitant in accepting such 
invitations. 

There are too many interdenominational organ- 
izations. We see no reason why there should not 
be a general merging all along the line, for the sake 
both of efficiency and of economy. 

We look forward finally to the establishment of 
an International Council of Churches, which shall 
have as its supreme purpose the Christianization 
of our international relations and ‘the establish- 
ment of a fuller spiritual life among all people. 

As young people we desire to cooperate with these 
interdenominational agencies. We feel that we are 
entitled to a place on the administrative and execu- 
tive boards of such organizations as the Federal 
Council of Churches and its several commissions 
and committees, the Council of Church Boards of 
Education, the International Council of Religious 
Education, and the Interdenominational Mission- 
ary Movements. 

We petition the executive officers of the universal 
Christian Conference on Life and Work and the 


154. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


World Conference on Faith and Order for repre- 
sentation on their respective Continuation Com- 
mittees. We have no desire to displace the leader- 
ship of our adult comrades in the faith. Not at all. 
But we do have the right to “sit in” with the older 
leaders of these movements and whenever possible 
to add eur word of counsel in the shaping of pro- 
grams and policies. 

For the further promotion of these interdenomi- 
national contacts we strongly advise the frequent 
convening of this particular type of student confer- 
ence, 


MEMBERS OF THE COMMISSION 


Gorpon E. BieeLow, Union Theological Seminary 

Wiii1am E. Brarsrep, Brown University 

Harotp R. Brennan, Wesleyan University 

Monty CoGeEsHaLL, Vassar College 

Marcaret Day, Vassar College 

JoHN A. Decker, Union Theological Seminary 

JoHN W. Easton, Princeton University 

TILLMAN H. Henperson, Howard University 

Lenora Hiscock, Mount Holyoke College 

Carrot, H. Lone, Princeton University 

Epwin R. Levinn, New York University 

Grorce E. McCracken, Princeton University 

Leon R. McKetvey, Lafayette College 

W. D. Marutas, Union Theological Seminary 

Wiitiam C. Swartz, Lafayette College 

Berry SpPEARH, Mount Holyoke College 

JOHN WILLS, Massachusetts Institute of Terhnplovy 

Roserr OQ. WILson, Princeton University 

JAMES H. Wooprurr, Boston University School of 
Theology 


General Chairman 


Walter W. Van Kirk, Federal Council of the 
Churches of Christ in America 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 155 


In presenting various portions of the Report of the Com- 
mission, members of the Commission placed the following 
additional information before the Conference. 


EDUCATION AND INTERDENOMINATIONAL ACTIVITY 


George H. McCracken, Student, Princeton University 


We have working in our churches two organiza- 
tions which work from a joint enterprise standpoint. 
The first of these is the Council of Church Boards 
of Education. 

Their first business is to find facts, then to put 
them out at the disposal of the people who want 
them. Their work is further carried on in an at- 
tempt to unite the workers in various tax-supported 
institutions. They have a department that works 
on life service. One of their most important func- 
tions is to work with the various boards of educa- 
tion. ; 

The other organization in this field is the Inter- 
national Council of Religious Education which is a 
joint combination of the International Sunday 
School Association and the Sunday School Council 
of Evangelical Denominations. It has State, 
county, and city branches. The aim is to bring 
into religious education the principles of pedagogy. 
I want to stress the importance of work that is 
being done by the Council of Church Boards of 
Education among the universities. 

At the University of Pennsylvania they have 
united all the student workers into one council, 
and each student worker takes up a special depart- 


156 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


ment of work and is the specialist for the whole 
university, for all denominations on that particular 
subject. At East Lansing, Michigan, they have 
started a union church in which four big denomina- 
tions have representatives on the board. 


SocraAL SERVICE AND INTERDENOMINATIONALISM 


W. D. Matthias, Student, Union Theological 
Seminary 

Just what has the church accomplished thus far 
in industry from an interdenominational point of 
view? We find there are two institutions which 
are specially important in this regard: first the De- 
partment of Research and Education of the Federal 
Council of Churches. We find that this group is 
doing a great piece of work in the rural field. Again, 
we find that the same department has given to the 
public the prohibition report which has received 
some commendation and vice versa. Then, again, 
we find that the church is trying to see just what 
the status of union labor is to-day. These, my 
friends, are some of the things that that particular 
department of the Federal Council of Churehes is 
now doing. 

Then there is the Commission on Social Service of 
the Federal Council of Churches. We find it work- 
ing in making an investigation of the motion pic- 
ture industry, and some other things of like regard. 
Furthermore, they are cooperating with the Ameri- 
can Federation of Labor in attempting to determine 
just why labor is opposed to the church, and how 


4 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 157 


the church can help labor, and in turn, labor serve 
the best interests of the church. 

We find that in March a team is to go to Florida 
to investigate some of the real-estate propositions 
which are now being thrust upon the public in that 
State, and at the same time hold conferences as to 
just what ethical real-estate business should be. 
They are now making study courses as to what the 
unemployment situation is, some practical ideas of 
industrial democracy to-day, and also how the 
church and industry can get together. 


MISSIONS AND INTERDENOMINATIONAL Work 
Mr. James Woodruff, Student, Boston University 


Is it not significant that in that work of the 
church which most exemplifies the spirit of Jesus 
and the spirit of the dark angel of sacrifice, there 
came the first drawing together of the forces of 
the church? To-day the Foreign Missions Confer- 
ence of North America is an organization repre- 
senting the mission boards of the largest Protestant 
denominations in the United States, with the excep- 
tion of the Southern Baptist. 

Then there is the relation with the religious body 
of Europe, which is a Commission of Federal Coun- 
cil of Churches. May I say, I think the most 
significant cooperative effort is the Federal Council 
of Churches organized in 1908, a result of this co- 
operative missionary effort, and now including all 
the departments of the church. 


158 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 
Race RELATIONS AND INTERDENOMINATIONALISM 
Gordon E. Bigelow 


Our nation was founded on the assumption of 
brotherhood and yet in these latter days we find 
some hectic junkers at Washington slapping our 
Japanese brothers in the face by abrogating the 
Gentlemen’s Agreement. As a nation we pretend 
to follow Jesus, and yet scores of Americans stand 
by their very church doors to watch with gibing 
satisfaction the lynching of a Negro. Christian 
America, although it does not seem credible, per- 
mitted between 1885 and 1922, 4,154 persons, 3,120 
of whom were Negroes, to be lynched by mobs. 
Large groups of our population will have nothing to 
do with Jews because they maintain that this is a 
land for Christians, and yet at the same time claim 
to be the followers of the greatest Jew who ever 
lived. Many individuals distrust the immigrant, 
saying that he is dirty, unsanitary, and the cause of 
much crime; and yet he is forced to live under con- 
ditions which of themselves produce filth, disease, 
and economic hardship. 

Some question the rights of the Roman Catholics 
to their religion and yet praise Roger Williams for 
helping to establish religious liberty. It is indeed 
obvious that these conditions which I have pictured 
are incompatible with Christianity. We are told 
that there are over 50,000,000 Christians in the 
United States to-day. Youth wants to know what 
is the matter with these Christians. It is encourag- 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 159 


ing to note that certain groups within the church 
have been working to right this wrong. Four years 
ago there was formed as a department of the Fed- 
eral Council of Churches of Christ in America a 
division called the Commission on the Church and 
Race Relations. Here are some of the things it is 
doing: It is conducting a campaign to marshal the 
churches against lynching, the goal being “ a lynch- 
less land in 1926.” It assists local committees in 
settling their community problems. It conducts 
interracial conferences. It promotes race-relations 
Sundays on which days white and Negro pastors 
and representatives of their people visit churches 
of races other than their own. We were astounded 
to learn that out of 247 Negro churches less than 
twenty reported that a white preacher or white 
person had ever paid them a visit. Just one year 
ago this past November the “Commission on Good 
Will Between Jews and Christians” was formed as 
a branch of the Commission on International 
Justice and Good Will of the Federal Council of 
Churches of Christ in America. This Commission 
is aiming to bring the Jewish and Christian peo- 
ples closer together, so that between them mutual 
understanding and sympathetic appreciation shall 
prevail. | 

The Commission on International Justice and 
Good Will of the Federal Council has been actively 
engaged in an attempt to solve this race problem. 
Noteworthy among its efforts is the protest against 
the Japanese Exclusion Act. 


160 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


On October 24 the Federal Council of Churches 
issued an appeal for justice to China. It was urged 
that China’s welfare be the chief consideration of 
the international conferences being held in Peking. 
The statement presented to Secretary Kellogg in- 
cluded a plea for the abolition of extraterritoriality 
and restoration of tariff autonomy to China. 

We suggest: 

1. That the church can accomplish nothing in the 
solution of the race problem until its members them- 
selves are won to a belief in the efficacy of the 
Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount, and 
then transcribe that belief into action. How can 
our so-called one hundred per cent American church 
members call their brothers “dagos, wops, kikes, 
guineas, coons, and niggers,’ when the Christ whom 
they claim to worship was himself a Jew and an 
Oriental, and the one great principle for which he 
lived and died was that all men are brothers? 

2. Since we feel that ignorance of the facts is 
really at the bottom of the whole problem, we advo- 
cate a much more extensive campaign of education 
which shall disseminate the real truth concerning 
the races in question. We feel that altogether too 
few church members at the present time know what 
the leading anthropologists of the world have to 
say about the question of inferior or superior races. 

3. We urge that the pulpits throughout America 
be used more frequently to present these facts to 
their congregations. 

4. We feel that here is a problem upon the solu- 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 161 


tion of which all the churches of the community can 
work in united effort. In only such united endeavor 
will the various denominations realize their com- 
mon objectives, and thus foster cooperation and 
good will. 

Two methods of approach to the problem are sug- 
gested by contemporary society: those of force and 
those of mutual cooperation and good will. The 
method of force has been applied through the his- 
tory of mankind, and he who runs may read its 
failure. It is the feeling of our committee that 
this method is absolutely un-Christian. To this end 
we wish to voice our disapproval of all such organ- 
izations as the Ku Klux Klan, the American Defense 
Society, and the National Security League. Prob- 
ably the most flagrant demonstration of this spirit 
is found in the Ku Klux Klan. 

Youth feels to-day that the church should spend 
more time learning the lessons taught at the manger 
cradle of Bethlehem and less time at the tinseled 
altars of one-hundred-per-cent Americanism and race 
superiority, which a material civilization has 
erected in our country. Then would the song of the 
angels become a program of life, and in good will 
men might discover that peace which is essential to 
the establishment of God’s kingdom—a kingdom 
which flies no flag but the flag of universal brother- 
hood. 


DISCUSSION ON THE CHURCH AND COOPERATION 
Mr. Barton, Missouri: That speech and the pro- 


162 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


gram opens the way to a very concrete and actual 
suggestion that I want to make to this conference. 
It has to do with our direct connection of the church 
as we go back to the campuses. Anybody knows 
that the place where we give expression is in the 
young people’s society. It seems to me there are 
possibilities of developing great cooperation in our 
churches. Imagine the possibilities, if you will, of 
a national program department which can give to 
the program chairmen of these young people’s so- 
cieties on our campuses some of these great facts 
and some of the material which is presented by some 
of the leading minds of the country, some of these 
commissions which give us facts, that will give us 
a high grade discussion on these subjects. Carry 
that one step further, if you will. On certain impor- 
tant occasions, and on important subjects, we could 
have all over America in every student group a 
simultaneous and uniform discussion of some of 
these great problems. 

The effect on the public conscience of America 
of such a program, it seems to me, would be tre- 
mendous. It would allow us as students to register 
our Own opinion in a way we have never been able 
to do before. 

I would suggest that this conference go on record 
as favoring the general idea of a higher type of 
program in our young people’s society, a coordi- 
nated approach on many of the important questions, 
and leave the details of definition of objective and 
exact organization and financing to the continua-— 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 163 


tion committee of this conference which, it seems 
to me, ought to be appointed. 

Student, Friends University, Kansas: There was 
an excellent suggestion made about young people’s 
organizations. At the present time there are three 
of them, the Christian Endeavor, Epworth League, 
and B. Y. P. U. These are the outstanding ones. 
We could appoint a continuation committee to 
investigate the possibilities of amalgamation. It 
could have a national campaign, a national organ- 
ization of its own to work through the young peo- 
ple’s societies. If we could work out something like 
that, we would probably learn something about the 
technic of tackling national organizations. 

Mr. Winter, Chicago: If industrial injustice is 
primarily a cause of war and the unwillingness to 
consider property as a stewardship rather than as 
personal right, we want to know about it, and the 
place to learn about it is in the college halls where 
we have the facilities for scientific investigation. 
I think this conference should recommend several 
courses in our various colleges. They should be 
courses that are truly scientific. 

Mr. Dieviler, University of Pennsylvania Graduate 
School: At Pennsylvania we are not conscious of the 
struggle between the Christian associations and the 
individual denominations, such a struggle as is very 
commonly felt in other colleges. We are working 
together very harmoniously at Pennsylvania. The 
only job that isn’t held by a denominational secre- 
tary is that of the social service director. I don’t 


164 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


know just what denomination he is. We don’t con- 
cern ourselves with that at Pennsylvania. 

Consequently, our campus has been said to be the 
best organized, religiously, of any in the United 
States. I don’t put that up as a boast. I don’t 
know whether it is very true or not. However, we 
have found the denominations work together har- 
moniously under such a system of dividing up the 
field. 

Mr. Wyker, Lexington, Kentucky: It is high time 
we young people have some organization through 
which we can gain expression. The Federal Coun- 
cil of the Churches of Christ at the present time 
is willing to develop a young people’s department. 

Mr. Veatch, Columbia: Our own campuses are 
split wide open by competing organizations. We 
have control over some of them to a certain extent. 
Some of those we have no control over. At any rate, — 
the boards of these organizations are not at all in 
harmony or in cooperation. There are the Y. M. 
C. A.’s, the Y. W. C. A.’s, the different church boards 
with student pastors, sometimes student houses, de- 
nominational houses on the campus. Here is an- | 
other proposition where the Federal Council can 
come in. I believe we want unity and Christian 
unity. I believe we want a student control, a cen- 
tral unity with all of the help the other organiza- 
tions can give us. 

Mr. West, Nebraska: It seems every time a group 
of students want to decide something should be done 
they decide to do it through an organization. I _ 


EE OT ey ee 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 165 


wonder if we would accomplish more in carrying 
out the spirit by becoming a part of the Federal 
Council of Churches and working through that, or 
by going back to the campuses and attempting to 
put into practice the spirit that has been suggested 
here, the spirit of unity. That has been suggested 
as a solution of our problem. Very little has been 
said about how we should go about it. It seems 
to me we can do more by trying to. solve that 
problem than we would by doing the conventional 
thing of becoming part of the established organiza- 
tion. 

Mr. McFadden, DePauw: I think we need unity 
rather than cooperation among our young people’s 


societies. It seems to me that we students who are 


here have power enough to make a unified young 
people’s society, and this is a field in which we can 
work and really accomplish something. I think 
the Epworth League should go in with the Chris- 
tian Endeavor, because the Christian Endeavor 
already is a union society of several denominations. 
The B. Y. P. U. should disband and go for the same 
reason. I think we here have power enough to make 
a union young people’s organization, and union is 
what we need, and not federation or cooperation. 
Miss Ashworth, Barnard College, New York City: 
I think most of us who have attended conferences 
know the thing that happens at the end of the con- 
ference is happening here to-day. I have been at 
the Princeton World Court Conference. At the con- 
clusion we passed a resolution going on record as 


166 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


formulating a permanent organization. Here we 
are formulating another organization. 

Mr. Dempster, Harvard: What we are trying to 
do is merge the organizations we have into one, 
and thereby instead of having more we will have 
less organizations. 

Mr. Smith, Union: I would like to report a cer- 
tain incident which I think every one here will be 
interested in hearing before we close at twelve 
o’clock. It is about race. Less than twenty-four 
hours ago a certain delegation here was stung open 
to its own negligence, and our common negligence 
in a certain race matter, and I know you will want 
to hear what it was. 

This delegation had invited certain other delega- 
tions to supper. One of the invited guests was a 
friend of one of our students and came from Liberia. 
We had made our arrangements for the supper by 
reserving tables. We found on visiting the restau- 
rant that this gentleman had been refused entrance 
there before, so we went to the manager of the 
restaurant to ask him what he could do. In a very 
courteous way, in a way that certainly disarmed 
us from attaching any blame to him, he said he was 
unable to allow this guest of ours to come in. He 
said, “There are people right here in this house 
eating their supper who will immediately make 
trouble, and make permanent trouble for me.” 

We walked for fifteen minutes across the city until 
we came to a Negro restaurant, a very nice, clean 
place, and the four of us had an excellent meal 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 167 


and an excellent discussion on international affairs. 
I might add for your information, that the gentle- 
man in question is a man of exceptional education, 
and is planning to end it up with a study of anthro- 
pology in Berlin. 

That thing could happen anywhere. A_ block 
away from our own school we could not get entrance 
for a Liberian. We have been asleep on the matter. 
I think we have got to be all stung awake by this 
little incident, so we will get back and realize the 
difficulties. There are many Negroes in the city. 
Are we prepared to ask for special privileges for 
an African and not for an American Negro? We 
have much to deal with, so I would like to see 
this conference discuss the race matter locally, a 
program which will require the discovery of facts 
and will require action. 

May I add just one thing? We can begin first by 
finding out where our Negro students on the 
campuses have to go to eat. In our own college a 
while ago we found they had to walk or travel for 
one half hour in order to get to a place to eat. 

Mr. Veatch, Columbia: I also found this matter 
out last night and certainly intended to bring it 
up before lunch time. I made a canvass of most of 
the restaurants and cafeterias in town, and found 
there are very few who will accept Negroes. I 
found that it is not necessarily a matter of prejudice 
on the part of the restaurant keeper, but a matter 
of economic necessity. He would lose certain 
patronage if he allowed Negroes to come in. I, as 


168 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


a Christian brother of Negroes, cannot eat in a 
place or sleep in a place where they cannot eat and 
sleep. I propose this noon not to go in the places 
where the Negroes cannot go. | | 

I propose that we eat in the restaurants where 
Negroes can go this noon and to-night, or else go 
to grocery stores and soda fountains and get 
erackers and cheese and go out on the lake-front and 
eat them. 

Mr. Schuldt, Garrett: We have been speaking a 
great deal about denominational cooperation, but 
there was one matter that seems to have slipped my 
mind. I don’t know what per cent of the students 
are from denominational schools. I am a graduate 
of Morningside College, Sioux City, Iowa. I find 
that one of the things facing the church is multi- 
plicity. In the State of Iowa we have five Meth- 
odist colleges that are just bleeding the people and 
struggling along trying to make ends meet. We 
have a military academy too. 


SumMMarRyY OF DISCUSSION 

Doctor Fitch: I suppose I think about this what 
the man would who has been spending thirty years 
in teaching lovable, exasperating, and valuable 
undergraduates. I think the conference has shown 
most of the characteristics of the academic youth 
of this nation. It is high-hearted, eager, and gener- 
ous. It is somewhat superficial and irresponsible. 
It is inherently conservative. That is about what. 
I should have expected from an undergraduate body. 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 169 


There is one thing I want to say. You want 
very much to do something about certain burning 
issues in our day, economic issues. The issue on 
denominationalism is the particular one that you 
feel very, very keenly, largely because you feel that 
from inside and out. Of course you are not well 
acquainted with the facts. 

Young people, if you want to have this kind of 

a conference show the constructive morals and 
power it should, you have to lift the level of disci- 
pline and intelligence on your campuses. That is 
one of the things that nobody here has talked about. 
It shouldn’t be injected now, however. You show 
here impressions of ideas, and you show yourselves 
very sensitive to impressions of ideas, and you don’t 
show very much capacity to hold accurately the 
ideals themselves. 
- You give the impression of fine, irresponsible, 
dissipated minds, scattered minds. I think one of 
the things that is the weakness behind all this sort 
of conferences is coming out of the system of train- 
ing in the colleges, where there is too much student 
activity and campus activity, and too little hard, 
intellectual discipline. That is probably due quite 
as much to our forms of education and the men 
teaching as it is to your own intellectual deficien- 
cies. I believe that it is due to both of those 
things. 

If this body of youth could show as much intellec- 
tual conscience as it shows moral conscience, it 
would do wonders. 


170 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


DISCUSSION 

Mr. Wise, Ohio Wesleyan: I cannot help but raise 
my voice in denunciation of another organization 
which we as students are backing and supporting 
and belonging to. 

It is not an organization, but a system which is 
un-Christian from the very root of things, although 
in some ways it does a great work; yet it is un- 
Christian. I believe there is a remedy for the un- 
Christian elements. I believe another organization 
can be put in place of this, which would remove 
the un-Christian elements, namely, selfishness, class 
distinction, raising up distinction between men and 
women, groups and individuals, and throwing up 
barriers. The organization which I speak of is a 
Greek letter fraternity system. 

In Ohio Wesleyan University we have put in mo- 
tion a movement not to displace that system, not to 
oppose it, but we have built up a system based on 
pure brotherhood. We call it “The Student Body of 
Ohio.” Our constitution reads, “Any man shall 
belong to this organization who is a member, who 
is a student in Ohio Wesleyan University.” 

Mr. Steiner, Ohio Wesleyan: What Mr. Wise has 
told you is true. He has brought to surface some- — 
thing that is very real to us. At Ohio Wesleyan © 
we have one thousand eight hundred students, about 
half of whom are men. The university does not — 
provide a single accommodation for these men. Four 
hundred and fifty of us men are living in Delaware, © 
Ohio, doing the best we can. The fraternities are 





YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 171 


only providing for four hundred and fifty. The 
Same condition prevails in many other Ohio col- 
leges. 

Mr. Fallon, Allegheny: I, for one, am in favor of 
the proposition that has just been stated. I had 
the privilege of joining a fraternity, but I did not 
believe it was Christian. 

Mr. Wilder, North Carolina: May I make a sug- 
gestion for maintaining the pep of this convention 
on our campus back home? I would suggest that 
the names be turned into the Continuation Com- 
mittee of all those who have made New Year’s reso- 
lutions to do something about this, when we get 
back on our home campuses, and then that the Con- 
tinuation Committee send out about the first of 
February questionnaires or requests for a report of 
what we have done up to that time; these reports 
to be turned in before a certain date and published 
and distributed as they see fit. 


SESSIONS ON FINDINGS 
Fripay AFTERNOON AND EVENING 


Miscellaneous Resolutions 


Mr. Hoyt, Upper Iowa University: The discus- 
Sions in this conference have centered around ques- 
tions of war, industry, and race, and the church 
opportunities concerning these questions. These 
problems are the problems of the rural people as 
well as of the urban people, but the rural people 
ask for understanding and for sympathy, and for 


172 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


help from the leaders, primarily interested in war, 
race, and industrial questions. I move that a 
committee be appointed by the Continuation Com- 
mittee to study conditions in relation to the church, 
and suggest specific lines of action both for churches 
and students through the church. 

Passed. 

Mr. Thomas, Columbia: We all remember the 
excellent speech by Mr. Ehrensperger the other day. 
In connection with this, may I offer the following 
resolution? I think most of us have thought suffi- 
ciently about this to require no extended discussion. 
This is the resolution : 

“Resolved, That the Interdenominational Student 
Conference go on record as favoring the adoption 
by our country and the church of a modified program 
of eugenics, consisting of these recommendations: 

“1. The legalizing of the dissemination of infor- 
mation concerning contraception, or birth control; 
2. By the means of segregation and sterilization to 
progressively eliminate those who are, by heredity, 
mentally unfit.” 

I believe these recommendations are in accord 
with the spirit of Jesus, who came that we might 
have abundant life, which means the possibility of 
everyone living up to the best and fullest of his 
power, and not flooding the country with the vastly 
superfluous number of undereducated and under- | 
fed children, who have an exceedingly small chance 
of becoming anything but economic and social bur- | 
dens. 

Carried. 





YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 173 


FINDINGS 
An APPRECIATION OF THE CHURCH 


This report was adopted as an interpretation of 
the session which discussed this subject rather than 
as a line of procedure. . 


Chairman of Findings on this Subject, 
John Wilkin, Boston University 


“With full appreciation of inconsistency and 
faults within the institution, ever mindful of per- 
versions from the original spirit which gave it birth, 
we nevertheless express our appreciation of the ex- 
tent to which the Christian Church has fulfilled its 
true mission. 

“The church has had a responsibility in main- 
taining adequate worship, the communion of God, 
with man, and man with God. There is conflict and 
intelligent demand for social service. The largest 
Opinion seemed to be that that is not a question of 
either, but both. The fullest expression of Chris- 
_tianity demands three, God and two humans. 

__ “The question was raised as to whether or not the 

church should detach itself from Western civiliza- 
tion. Certainly, Christianity should be free from 
_the taint and coloring of any particular civilization, 
but the civilization in which it has been deposited 
Should have the backbone to combat existing social 
ills. The church also has responsibility in meet- 
ing the demands of the intellect. Religion is a mat- 
ter of intellect, as well as a matter of emotion and 
will. Only partially has it met this need; yet in 
some respects it has made a decided contribution. 
First, it has established and maintained colleges 
and universities; secondly, it is rapidly improving 
its religious education; thirdly, with partial guc- 
cess it has trained its paid workers. 


174. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


“There is still, however, intellect bondage because 
of the influence of traditional beliefs. From this 
bondage we must free ourselves. Although given 
over to the consideration of appreciation of a 
church, the Wednesday morning session showed 
some decidedly critical expressions. 3 

“J, Denominations are organized around ances- 
tral worship. 

“2 The church was born in an atmosphere of 
autocracy and has fostered same. 

“3. Its passion for service has given over to 
passion for power. 

“4. Tt has chosen corruption to crucifixion. 

“In conclusion, the greatest need is a critical 
loyalty to the church as the best channel through — 
which to express our ideas. Unselfish, intelligent 
service, steeped in the purity of the gospel of Jesus 
Christ and dedicated to sacrifice, is the only method 
of combating the sullen and persistent dangers of — 
institutionalism.” 


FINDINGS 


Tue Casp AGAINST THE CHURCH 


Chairman of Committee, E. W. Stimpson, 
Washington University, St. Louis 


Report adopted as an interpretation of the ses-— 
sion on this subject, rather than as a line of pro-— 
cedure: { 

I. Tse CHurcH AND LaABor 

A. Stanley Dowley, a labor radical, held forth 
little hope for the solution of the laborer’s” 
problem by the application of the prin- 
ciples of Jesus in industry through the, 
church. He based his pessimism upon the 
following grounds: " 
1. The church is controlled by the domi- 

nant class and reflects its interests. © 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 175 


2. 


The church is indifferent and does not 
know the facts concerning labor’s true 
condition. 


. The church has no practical program to 


offer to solve the problem. 


. The church is a subtle moral weapon 


to keep the worker satisfied and servile. 


. The church is traditionally opposed to 


radicalism. 


. The conference was more optimistic than 


the speaker but is agreed that 


1. 


The church has been saturated with the 

philosophy and ideals of the dominant 

class, and has sacrificed the social 
teachings of Jesus for a conscious or- 
unconscious acceptance of our modern 

materialism. This situation can be im-. 

proved by 

a. A greater emphasis on the vital and 
dynamic expression of Christianity 
and far less stress upon the material 
aspect—mere numbers, wealth, and 
institutional buildings. 

b. Giving ministers more freedom ‘to 
preach their convictions on contro- 
versial subjects, in regard to the so- 
cial application of Christianity. 

c. Divorcing the ministry from the 
subtle pressure of capitalism. 


. The conference is agreed that the church 


knows far too little concerning the facts 
im contemporary industrial situations. 
The group felt that the church could act 
as a fact-finding agency in labor ques- 
tions, doing work similar to that of the 
research of the Social Service Bulletin 


If. 


ITl. 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


of the Federal Council of Churches, but 
on a much larger and more intensive 
scale. 

Here there was a difference of opin- 
ion. Some maintained that fact-finding 
was as far as the church should go. 
Others felt keenly that the church 
should take definite and specific action 
in labor controversies, and wherever 
there is a demand for social justice. 

3. The conference is agreed that the pro- 
gram of the church with regard to labor 
problems has been weak and ineffectual. 
(At this session little was suggested as 
remedial for this condition.) 


Tue CHURCH AND RACE 


A. The following criticisms of the church 
from the point of view of race were raised. 


1. The church has often stood for the most 


bigoted kind of racial discrimination. 


2. Such intolerant organizations as the 
Ku Klux Klan, anti-Catholic groups and 
anti-Semitics, have been tolerated and 
fostered by leaders in the Christian 
Church. 


B. The conference vigorously opposed the Ku 


Klux Klan, and all like organizations, and 


believes that every church should do the 


Same. 


Tour CHURCH AND THE SO-CALLED “MAN OF THR © 


STREET” 

Dr. Hubert Herring pointed out the fol- 
lowing typical and often heard criticisms of 
the church: 


1. The church is an agency for propaganda 


: 
: 
} 
: 
. 
¢ 





YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH — 177 


rather than a fellowship for free spir- 
itual exploration. 
2. The church is lost in institutionalism. 
3. The church has lost the spirit of daring 
and adventure. 


B. The conference is agreed that 


1. The church should limit the dogmatism 
of the pulpit, and that at least some 
portion of the church services should 
be given to open discussion and ques- 
tioning of the speaker. We _ should 
never be content with any doctrine as 
final truth. 

2. It is the feeling of the conference that 
institutionalism of the church has been 
aggravated by denominational competi- 
tion and by professional jealousy and 
politics among the church leaders. 

3. If there is a loss of the spirit of adven- 
ture, it is partially the result of our 
own complacency and indifference. The 
conference suggests that from within 
the church we use the experimental at- 
tack on all problems. 


FINDINGS 
CHRISTIANIZING Our CtvitizATION! 


Chairman of Findings Committee, Dale W. Stump, 
Ohio State University 


I. The Church and War 


1. We believe the church through its churches 
Should excommunicate war, dissociate itself from 


* At the suggestion of Mr. Roy Veatch, of Columbia Uni- 
versity, a standing vote was taken showing the attitude of 
students on one aspect of the war question. One hundred 
eighty-one delegates voted that in the event of a future 


178 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


the war system, and refuse henceforth to allow the 


use of the church as a medium of preparation for, 


or prosecution of, war. 

2. Because we favor a positive education for 
peace, and because we believe that the present mili- 
tary training program of the War Department in 


high schools and colleges gives war an ultimate 


sanction, perpetuates the war system, delays dis- 
armament, intimidates students and faculty, and 
inhibits free discussion, we suggest: 


a. Abolition of military training in church and 
denominational schools. 

b. Abolition of military training in high schools. 

ec. Abolition of military training in colleges and 
universities, including immediate abolition of its 
compulsory features in land grant institutions. 


3. Every local church should guard and guaran-— 
tee the right of an individual to follow the guidance 


of his own conscience when that conscience advises | 
against participation in war. 
4. Because war is a negation of the value of hu 
man personality we condemn any attempt to impose — 


universal conscription of manhood on the United 


: 


} 


States, such as the proposed legislation before Con-_ 


gress. 

5. We believe the United States should take a 
leading share in promoting and participating in any 
international organization fostering good will and 


cooperation between nations. In particular we urge 
the immediate ratification of the Protocol of the 


Permanent Court of International Justice at The 


Hague, participation of the United States in formu- 
war they felt that they must absolutely refuse to partici- 


pate. Sixty-five felt that their duty in the event of war 
would lie in fighting. Two hundred fifteen felt that they 
had not thought the matter through to a definite decision. 

The total membership of the Conference was nearly 900. 


1 








YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 179 


lating plans for the projected disarmament confer- 
ence, and entry into the League of Nations. We 
urge the churches to continue their efforts along 
these lines. 


Discussion CONCERNING THE FINDINGS ON THE 
CHURCH AND War 


Mr. McCallum: It seems to me we are going the 
other way and not being tolerant, when we say 
“abolition of military training.” It seems to me we 
should state the abolition of compulsory military 
training, and permit those whose views are opposite 
ours to have it. 

_ Mr. Paige, Hamline University: Why take the 
teeth out of one of the best things we have gotten 
in the conference? 

Mr. Nowlen, Denver: We speak of toleration. If 

we mean toleration of sin, that is what we mean. 
When we speak of toleration in any form of war, 
it is toleration of sin. I would like to find out this 
fact. Even if military training in high school is 
not compulsory, it is made to appear so attractive, 
so patriotic in a way that high-school students can- 
not understand that it is taken up, and is just as 
popular as if it were compulsory. I think we would 
be taking all the vitality out of this resolution if 
we put the word “compulsory” in it. I think we 
would be tolerating sin. 
: Student, Cole, Iowa: I come from an R. O. T. C. 
institution. I realize there are a great many who 
believe in the R. O. T. C. movement. We have to 
take that into consideration. Not every one be 
lieves the R. O. T. C. should be entirely eliminated. 
If we are to take the first step, we must take it 
Tightly. 

Mr. Ewing, Western Seminary: This report of 
the committee seems to me to be inadequate in one 


180 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


respect. I am heartily in favor of it as far as it 
goes. After a good deal of thought about war and 
peace, it seems war cannot be abolished by the 
action of the officials of one country. Therefore, I 
wish to propose an addition to the motion, without 
making any change in the committee report: 

“5. We believe the United States should take a 
leading share in promoting and participating in any 
international organization fostering good will and 
cooperation between nations. In particular, we 
urge the immediate ratification of the protocol of 
the Permanent Court of International Justice at 
The Hague, participation of the United States in 
formulating plans for the projected disarmament 
conference, and entry into the League of Nations. 
We urge the churches to continue their efforts along 
these lines.” Carried. (See Findings, p. 177.) — 

Miss Speare, Mount Holyoke: I would like to sug- 
gest that the vote just taken be sent to the Senate 
and President Coolidge, that they may know of our 
indorsement of President Coolidge’s indorsement 
of the disarmament conference, and also that the 
Senate may know of our feelings in regard to the © 
World Court and League of Nations. | 

Mr. Jenkins, Ohio State: When we go back to © 
our schools, President Coolidge and the Senate of 
the United States won’t send us personal letters and 
tell us to continue our efforts in the schools to get 
rid of the militarization of the mind of youth. All 
the State universities that are land grant universi- 
ties will still keep on drilling year after year unless 
each one takes the responsibility to go back on the © 
campus and stump the campus with the idea that — 
we are for the abolition of these different things. 
II. The Church and Education 3 

Since we conceive life to be a creative experiment — 
in aggressive good will, we recommend the educa- — 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 181 


tional approach to the solution of human problems 
facing the church, involving a careful survey of the 
facts, freedom of expression, consideration of all 
viewpoints, thorough experimentation, and as far 
as possible living contacts with immediate com- 
munity needs. 

We recommend that programs be organized in 
terms of Christian projects to be done instead of 
meetings to be held. 

We recommend the introduction of courses in 
denominational schools and universities designed 
to search for a Christian solution of social problems 
embodying a careful survey of the facts, freedom 
of expression, consideration of all viewpoints, 
thorough experimentation, and as far as possible liv- 
ing contacts with immediate community needs. - 


EXPLANATION OF BACKGROUND OF FINDINGS ON THE 
CHURCH AND EDUCATION 


Mr. Howard McCluskey: In order to utilize this 
time and make it just as concrete as possible, let 
me give you some of the things I had in mind that 
I was not able to give last night. First of all, I 
want to emphasize the experimental viewpoint. I 
have in mind such projects as the industrial sum- 
mer projects for students. They work in the large 
industrial plants and have weekly or biweekly meet- 
ings and discuss experiences. It embodies the prin- 
ciple of experimentation and the principles of ex- 
perience, which are absolutely fundamental. 

I would like to start out with this thesis. We 
do not know (get this) in terms of specific behavior 
_ what the Christian life means. We do know we 


182 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


should not kill or steal, and some of those simple 
things. In view of the complexed society, in order 
to create the new life, we havea to experiment. 
Therefore, there is the necessity of sae erage the 
experimental attitude. 


Emphasizing the careful survey of all the facts 


is very, very important. As I indicated, one great 
leader in the new viewpoint has utilized the past 
year in getting new points, refreshing his back- 
ground so he can come to these problems with the 
better view. I would suggest that it be a pre- 
requisite of your conference that no one should 
speak unless he knows absolutely what he is talking 
about, and although he may not be an expert on the 
subject, at least have the advice and consultation 
of the experts. 

I would also suggest that you do not allow any 
one to speak in the young people’s meetings unless 
they have had contact with the problem with which 
they are dealing, either in terms of research or in 
terms of living experience. For instance, if you 
are going to have a meeting in one of your young 
-people’s groups on the race problem, I suggest be- 
fore you have that meeting, say, two weeks before- 
hand, that you appoint a committee to go out and 
make friends with some college students on the 
campus, and get their viewpoint, and make a sur- 


vey of the restaurants where they are discriminated — 
against, where they do not get fair play, and find — 


all the details they can. 


Furthermore, I wish it were possible to have an — 


> 
ny 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 183 


adult educational program in the church like we 
have in the labor union and other fields. I wish. 
there were enough older people in the church who 
were enough concerned with the problem that they 
were willing to spend nights during the week study- 
ing these things instead of playing bridge. 

Let me suggest this concrete thing. The B. Y. 
P. U., Epworth League, Christian Endeavor and 
Luther League should be unified. The home offices 
Should be the pooling ground for the experience 
of the young folks all over the country. We, there- 
fore, would have a cooperative enterprise in Chris- 
tian living. Whenever you folks come up against 
any practical problem in your own community, you 
send a report of that problem to the home office. 
They send back bulletins to you, and you will have 
a unified approach of the whole thing, and you will 
be approaching it entirely upon the demonstration 
basis. I see absolutely no reason in the world why 
all of these organizations shouldn’t get together 
and work together in a unified scheme. If you 
would do that for five years or for one generation, 
the question of denominationalism would solve it- 
self, 


FINDINGS 


Tue CHURCH AND RACE 


We believe that present relationships between 
races are inconsistent with the mind and teachings 
of Jesus concerning brotherhood; and since we, as 
students, now face a real problem on our campuses 


184 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


in the relations of the students of the various races 
and creeds, hence: 

We suggest that we give ourselves to an unbiased 
study of the races in an effort to find a solid basis 
for relationships of equality and mutuality and to 
gain an appreciation of the distinctive contribu- 
tion and capacity of each race. 

That the Cosmopolitan Clubs and other associa- 
tions of similar purpose and scope be given all pos- 
sible moral and material encouragement by the 
churches, the young people’s societies, and the 
homes in the communities concerned. 

That we work to remove discrimination against 
Negroes, in matters of grades and self-expression 
in classrooms, honorary fraternities, transportation 
facilities, hotels, restaurants, and places of amuse- 
ment. 

That we especially commend the work of the Inter- 
racial Council at the Ohio State University and 
recommend that such agencies be established on 
every campus and in every community where there 
-is a mixed population, with the end in view of dis- 
covering the causes of racial discrimination and 
obtaining an attitude of mind which will promote 
better cooperation and understanding. 

That we indorse the Dyer anti-lynching bill and 
inform Congress to that effect. 


DISCUSSION CONCERNING FINDINGS ON CHURCH AND 
RACE 


Miss Pennypacker, Fisk University: I want to 





: 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 185 


draw attention to another evil that is facing us to- 
day. I am not a member of the Negro race or a 
despised race, but I am a human being with the 
same ideals, the same aspirations, the same pas- 
sions, the same thoughts that you have. Some may 
say that there is no need for this to be brought up 
or discussed because things are improving so 
rapidly. That is true. We recognize it, but I think 
that there is a need, as far as Christian churches 
are concerned, to discuss it, as long as they are not 
allowed to come in and sit where they please and 
voice their sentiments. We need to bring attention 
to it so long as a dying child is refused the privilege 
of being prayed over because she happens to be 
black. We need to bring attention to it so long 
as a blind man shuffling into a church is thrown 
out because his skin is black. 

I am not asking you to become a social outcast, 
i am not asking you to receive Negro students as 
your friends and your best pals, but I am asking 
that you give them a chance to do what they can. 
I am not asking that you go out in your community 
to become a suffering martyr, but I am asking that 
you create a sentiment whereby if you are not will- 
ing to help or give them a hand, for God’s sake, 
get out of their way and let them go on as best 
they know how. 

Mr. Bolton, Clark University: This is a perennial 
problem because it is so interwoven in our national 
life that we cannot escape it. It is a perennial 
problem, because I cannot see where America can 


w 


186 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


dictate world peace, when she has shown herself 
utterly unable to deal justly with her own subjects. 

You probably saw this morning in the Tribune 
that there were eighteen Negroes lynched in the 
United States last year. Mississippi led with six. 
Mississippi was the highest. I would call attention 
to two specific cases. In the State of Mississippi 
one colored man was accused of a crime. He was 
tried. A jury of twelve white men sat upon his 
ease. A white jurist presided. He was shown to 
be innocent of the crime charged against him, yet 
when that man stepped from the courtroom, ac- 
quitted by a white jury, he was lynched. That is the 
sixth case that has happened in Mississippi this 
year. 

I might tell of another case in Florida. A young 
colored fellow was accused of the killing of a white 
man. A friend of mine said: “I would hate to be 
there. Some colored man is going to be killed.” In 
_ jess than twenty-four hours an innocent man was 


killed, because the angry mob was unable to find | 


the colored man who had committed the crime. 
When America shows her inability to restrain the 
savage impulses, and mobs and roasts her citizens, 
she cannot dictate world peace. 


In the State of Tennessee, the State that passed © 
the anti-evolution bill, the State that so zealously © 


guarded the Bible as the Word of God, I saw more 


than five thousand people lynch, roast, and burn a ~ 
colored citizen. I saw men carry a piece of the 
man’s clothing in their pockets. Right within the 








YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 187 


shadow of the capital of that State, a young colored 
youth, about sixteen years old, was lynched. Yet 
that was the State that so zealously safeguarded 
the Bible. 

There are just a few suggestions I would like to 
make, and I appreciate this opportunity. I would 
suggest that you young people use your own influ- 
ence in learning something about the contribution 
and cultural achievements of other races as a means 
of saying whether other races are inferior or su- 
. perior; while the psychologists make such contri- 
butions, yet I feel in the present state of intelligence 
tests, it is dangerous propaganda for psychologists 
_ to spread the idea that the inferiority of races is 
_ upon the basis of psychological tests. 

_ I have a motion to put a little teeth into that 
recommendation. I move that the students of the 
interdenominational conference go on record as 
_ recommending to Congress the passage of the Dyer 
_ Antilynching Bill. 

{ do not speak in defense of the colored race. I 
have no selfish interests, because I am a colored 
man. I rather assure you I speak in defense of en- 
lightened humanity. I speak in defense of the ideas 
upon which this government was founded. I speak 
in defense of the assumed place of leadership which 
the American nation has assumed among the rest 
of the great and powerful nations of the world. 

Miss Ownbey, Columbia University: I am opposed 
to the students taking upon our shoulders the recom- 
mending of such a bill, when we are unable to hear 


188 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


all sides of the question, in particular the side of 
the taxpayers who will be affected by this bill. 
Although a native of the North, I have lived in the 
South, and I wish to say that the white race in the 
South has not been wholly to blame for these lynch- 
ings. If you will investigate, you will find that 
some of the cases show that such mob attacks have 
grown out of injustice put over on the white people 
of the South in localities where the colored people 
greatly outnumbered the white race. 

Up here in the North we don’t hear of the South- 
ern problems in the way the Southerners have to 
face them. We don’t hear of the terrible crimes 
perpetrated, for which no one is punished because 
of the majority of colored people in the community 
in which he is tried. The South has just as good, 
sincere, intelligent, Christian people of the white 
race as you find North of the Mason-Dixon Line. 
The only thing is that we think we understand their 
problems so much better than they who have faced 
them for years. I think we have taken a great deal 
upon our shoulders when we attempt to teil the 
people of the South how to deal with a problem 
which we have never experienced to any degree. 

Miss Pennypacker, Fisk: I want to appeal to this © 
body. You know “anti” means against, and you — 
know the idea that lynching carries with it. I per-— 
sonally am a Southerner. I was born, reared, have — 
lived, and will stay in Texas. Evidently, that is” 
South. lam not trying to give debate for any group 4 
of men to take upon their shoulders the respon-— 


| 





YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 189 


sibility to decide what is to be given as a punish- 
ment. Is it ever right under any conditions to take 
human life, and let no man be punished for it? 
(The Findings on Church and Race were adopted, 
p. 176.) 


LV: 
FINDINGS 


Tae CyHurcH anp INDUSTRY 


We believe that the modern industrial system as 
now organized on a competitive basis with produc- 
tion for profit rather than use, is the prolific source 
of the major evils such as war, class distinctions, 
and economic inequality. 

We therefore suggest the following as typical 
measures by Christian students for betterment of 
industrial and social relations. 


1. Study of local labor problems and conditions 
in the immediate community. 

2. Participation where possible in the local labor 
activities or organizations. 

3. That the Christian exemplify in his expendi- 
ture of money a simple standard of living and 
view his income as a social obligation justi- 

- fiable only in so far as he renders a service to 
society in return. 

4. We commend the endeavor on the part of the 
churches to share the responsibility and aspi- 
rations of labor and trade unions in all 
instances where justice and brotherhood are 
the ends sought, and commend their indorse- 
ment of collective bargaining. 

5. We further recommend that a conference be 
held specifically on the Christian student and 
industry. 


199 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


Mr. Mathias, Union: I make the following sug- 
gestions in the form of a recommendation to be 
added to the report: 

“We, as a conference, urge that the voice of the 
chureh, concerning industry, shall be, first, a recog- 
nition of the worth of personality; secondly, an atti- 
tude of brotherhood as between all in industry; 
third, the promotion of the motive of service. I 
make this as a motion at this time as the attitude 
of the quorum.” 

Carried. 

Mr. Mathias: I have another suggestion which 1 
would like to have added to the report. It is that 
we as a conference urge the research and educa- 
tional department of the Federal Council of 
Churches to immediately get in touch with the 
American Federation of Labor, in an honest effort 
to make a survey of labor, as to why they are op- 
posed to the church, as such, and for them to make 
suggestions as to how the church can be of service 
to them. 

Carried. 


DISCUSSION CONCERNING FINDINGS ON THE CHURCH 
AND INDUSTRY 


Mr. Wilkin, Boston: It seems to me the general © 
impression of this report is distinction in one class. 
We have acted a good deal against the evils of 
capitalism and imperialism. If we go to the other 
extreme and state in the resolution that we only 
favor labor, it seems to me we are just causing class” 
distinction. The thing we should do is show in> 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 191 


our report that we stand for the rights of both. I 
believe there must be a change in heart on both 
sides to solve this question by economic principles. 
There should be a change in attitude especially on 
the side of capital. I believe, therefore, in this 
report summary we should recommend that the pul- 
pits of the country flame out a little bit on religious 
and social righteousness. 

This goes back to the function of the church. I 
think the function of the church is to afford a place 
where Christians can worship God. I think if we 
can make Christians and send them out in the 
world, these problems will solve themselves. 

Student, Northwestern: In my estimation this is 
the best piece of work this conference has done. If 
we table the resolution on industry that has been 
presented, and substitute a very mild and very 
inefficient substitution, namely, that we favor the 
Golden Rule in industry, I think we have lost a 
great deal that we have accomplished at this con- 
ference. 

Miss Lewis, Taylor University: I wish to bring 
to our minds the fact that there are two sides to 
this question. Capital is necessary to labor in order 
that laborers may work, and labor is necessary in 
order that capital may be developed, and both are 
interdependent. Let us have that principle of 
Christ behind us, and let us have the power of Christ 
in our minds, that we may follow the principle of 
Christ, whether we be laborers or capitalists. 

Mr. Dowley, Ohio University: I should like to 


192 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


point out that there are three elements that enter 
into production. There is land, which is a natural 
resource; there is labor, which is a personal ele- 
ment, and there is capital which is the result of 
labor expended upon natural resources. Labor is 
the only personal element that enters into produc- 
tion. Labor has no dependence on capital as a class. 

Mr. Stimpson, Washington University: There is 

a fourth element, which is the element of manage- 
ment. For that reason we have two personal ele- 
ments in this controvery. 
_ Mr. Jenkins, Chicago: The subject brought up in 
regard to management is right, but management is 
one kind of labor, and the wages for management 
come under the same heading as the wages for labor, 
and are quite a different thing from profit result- 
ing from the investment of capital. 

Mr. Chandler, McCormick: I believe it is right. 
If-we must take one side or the other, we had better 
defend the laboring man, because he needs defense. 
Capitalists already have enough defending them, 
and don’t need any help. 

Mr. Juvinall, Northwestern: I lived in a railroad 
center for four years and have seen the strikes. 
Some strikes are unjustifiable, and it is justifiable 
in certain cases for students to help in breaking up 
the strike, and in some cases acting as scabs and 
taking the place of union labor. 

Mr. Dowley: It may be true that some strikes — 
are unjustifiable, but, on the whole, the reason men 
strike is because of their families, because of their 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 193 


children, because of hunger, because of cold, because 
of all the necessities and good things of life. J 
can’t imagine Jesus going in and breaking up such 
a strike. 


REPORT OF THE STUDENT COMMISSION ON 
THE FOREIGN MISSION PROGRAM 
OF THE CHURCH 
Presented by Miss Rachel Childrey, Cornell 
University 

Introduction: In presenting this report the Com- 
mission takes into consideration several facts: 

1. The prevailing strong criticisms of missions. 

2. The indifference toward the present mission- 
ary program of the church displayed by American 
students. 

3. The conviction that there is a basis for a mis- 
sionary program in the future. 

4. And a belief that that basis may be found 
through the church and may involve a reinterpreta- 
tion of the missionary program. 

Therefore the commission presents in Part I 
criticisms of missions, and in Part IT recommenda- 
tions as to the principles upon which the program 
of the future is to be based in regard to: 

(1) The Formulation of the Program. 

(2) The Training of Workers. 

(3) The Application of the Program. 

(4) The Student’s Part in the Program. 

Parr I: The following are some of the criticisms 
of missions to-day presented before the Commission 
by foreign students, Christian and non-Christian, 
missionaries and board representatives. 

Criticisms of Missions of More or Less Recog- 
mized Validity: 1. Christian nations exploit the 
lands where they are sending missionaries. Their 


194 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


nationals are discriminated against and treated as 
inferiors in the United States by Christians. 

2. Too many missionaries are ignorant of the cul- 
ture of the people among whom they work and fail 
to appreciate and assimilate the good in other cul- 
tures and religions. 

3. Missionaries have frequently lacked the ability, 
skill, and intellectual training to understand the 
psychology of the people and to use the best methods 
in their field work. 

4. Many missionaries, even with a high degree of 
training, have lacked the spirit of real friendship 
toward the people. Many of them live upon a plane 
too widely separated from that of the people, and 
do not associate socially with them. 

5. Few missionaries have entirely rid them- 
selves of an attitude of superiority as to their own 
race and civilization. Many have had attitudes 
of intolerance and patronage without willingness 
to receive and learn. 

6. Missions have in many instances decultural- 
ized, even Americanized, nationals both in schools 
and churches. 

7. Missionaries have failed to develop many rl 
leaders among nationals. Training for leaders has 
too often produced men who will carry out their 
ideas. In their over-anxienty for certain results 
they have been unwilling to trust the leadership of 
nationals. Graduates of Christian schools have 
thus turned to other fields of work. 

8. Missions have forced Western sectarian and 
denominational divisions upon peoples to whom 
they mean nothing. 

9. Mission work in some countries has been based 
upon Western governmental protection, backed by 
armed forces, or upon rights gained in forced 
treaties. 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 195 


10. Missionaries have been the occasion of large 
indemnities. They have rights and privileges not 
possessed by nationals and are backed by the mili- 
tary force of Western nations on land and sea. 

11. Many missionaries have created false impres- 
Sions of mission lands for the sake of raising money. 
Missionary talks on education have frequently pro- 
duced pity and condescension rather than apprecia- 
tion and true understanding. 

12. The church in America is largely unwilling 
to aid Christian work in the East except as con- 
trolled by Americans and American ideas of Chris- 
tianity and of the church. 

13. Many missionaries in a scientific age are un- 
scientific in their methods of interpreting the Bible. 

Criticisms of Missions of Doubtful Validity: 

1. There is nothing absolutely unique in Chris- 
tianity to warrant its propagation where other reli- 
gions, revitalized, are meeting the needs of people. 

2. Christianity is a Western religion unsuitable 
for Eastern peoples. 

3. Missionaries are to withdraw from countries 
where Christianity is well implanted and so allow 
it to grow naturally. 

4. America should solve its own problems before 
exporting Christianity. 

9. Christianity does not accomplish what it 
claims. Its power to make the nations and the peo- 
ples of the West like Christ is not evident. 

6. Christianity is a spiritual arm, or a cover for 
Western imperialism, and missionaries are govern- 
ment agents. 

THE REINTERPRETATION OF THE MIssIONARY PROGRAM 


I. What Is the Program? 
A. The Postulates of the Program 
1, Christianity is unique among religions in the 


196 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


person of Jesus Christ and the expression of the 
character of God in Christ. 

2. Fellowship with God through Christ furnishes 
a unique dynamic to live in accord with universal 
truths wherever found, whether in Christianity or 
in other religions. 

3. Taking the life of Jesus Christ as its ideal, the 
program of Christianity is to make available for 
all men the power which comes through knowing 
him to grow toward that ideal. 

4, The foreign missionary program is an integral 
and essential part of the whole Christian enterprise 
to carry this unique dynamic through every area 
of life, the responsibility for which is shared by 
Christians in every land. 

B. The Objectives of the Program Are 

1. To make available for all men the power to 
grow toward the ideals of Christ which comes 
through knowing him. 

2. To provide spiritual cooperation which alone 
can solve the increasing common problems caused 
by the growing material interdependence of peo- 
ples; the establishment of world fellowship, world 
peace, and a new social order. 

3. To contribute to the development of Christian- 
ity through its fresh interpretation at the hands of 
new people. 

4. To quicken the world to spiritual development 
by revitalizing the spiritual values in other reli- 
gions. 


C. Some Concrete Applications of These Objectives 
in the Policy of the Churches and Their Boards 
1. Preaching of the gospel of Christ at home and 

abroad in order that his ideals and the power of his 

life may be made available to all men. 
2. Willingness to modify and reinterpret the mis- 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 197 


sionary program in view of changing world con- 
ditions. 

5. The recognition of responsibility toward polit- 
ical and economic life. 

(a) The missionary program should declare its 
independence from political and militaristic sup- 
port such as is afforded by: 

(1) The unequal treaties, 

(2) Extraterritorial rights, 

(3) Presence of gunboats, 
as directly contradictory to the principles of Chris- 
tianity. 

(b) The missionary program should stand di- 
rectly opposed to all unjust economic exploitation 
and encourage economic development along lines 
which recognize the value of personality. 

(c) Insofar as social and national movements 
are an expression of the attempt to realize the prin- 
ciples of Christianity the missionary program should 
support them to the best of its ability. 

4. Recognition of the place and worth of na- 
tionals. 

(a) The nationals should be allowed a complete 

expression of their national life and culture in all 
matters whether of interpretation, organization, or 
external expression of Christianity. 
-(b) The administration should be turned over 
to nationals as rapidly as possible and the emphasis 
should be laid upon helping them to develop their 
leaders. 7 

(c) The mission program should do everything it 
can to develop an indigenous and financially inde- 
pendent church. 

(d) The nationals should be given greater au- 
thority in the selection of missionaries. 

_ (1) One or more nationals should be given a voice 
either by representation on the candidate committee 


198 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


or as a reference in the selection of candidates be- © 


fore they are sent out. 

(2) In regions where the Christian movement 
is well developed the nationals should be given a 
controlling voice in determining whether or not a 
paraeaieid should continue his work. 


5. Recognition of a unity of purpose behind dif- 


fein theological opinions. 

(a) The missionary program should lay less 
emphasis on the definitions that divide and more on 
the essentials which unite. 

(b) Consolidation and unification of Christian 
effort actually should take place both at home and 
abroad for the development of the essential objec- 
tives of Christianity. 


Il. What Kind of Preparation Is Needed by the 
Workers Who Are to Carry Out This Program? 


A. The Intellectual Preparation 


1. The missionary should have a broad academic 


education and a thorough training in that specialty 


for which he is best fitted. 

2. He should have the ability to relate his inter- 
pretation of religion to modern developments in 
science. 

». He should have a knowledge and appreciation 
of the culture of the land to which he goes. 

(a) The mission boards should provide greater 
opportunity for extending this knowledge and ap- 
preciation for the culture of the land in which he 
works, both here and on the field. 


B. The Preparation in Spirit 


1. Every missionary should think through and 
test for himself the uniqueness of Christianity. 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 199 


2. He should be able to see and appreciate truth 
wherever it is found. 

3. He should eradicate all tendencies toward 
superiority and exclusiveness in his life such as may 
be found in fraternal orders, assertive denomina- 
tionalism, individual and group racial discrimina- 
tions, industrial organizations, social classes, and 
wherever else they are found. 


Ill. How Shall This Program Be Applied by the 
Missionary ? 


A. The Attitude and Spirit of the Missionary 


1. He should recognize the essential unity of the 
human race in spite of differences of race, color and 
creed, and work with all as brothers. 

2. He should be fraternal rather than paternal in 
his work with the nationals. 

3. He should take a firm and unequivocal stand 
on economic and social problems vital to the welfare 
of the people with whom he lives. 

4. The missionary should be tolerant and willing 
to learn. 

d). The missionary should be liberal toward those 
with whom he disagrees in theology or religion. _ 

6. The missionary should adapt his personal 
habits and customs to the life of the people with 
whom he works, to the end that he may be accepted 
as an integral part of their society. 


B. The Method of the Missionary 
1. He should go not to teach a system, but to 
share his Christian experience through personal 
contact. 
2. He should help the people work out their own 
expression of Christianity. 


200 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


C. We Commend the Statement of Gandhi That 
missionaries should ‘accept the high challenge to 
put in practice the principles of Jesus without adul- 
teration or toning them down.” 


IV. What Is the Christian Student’s Part in This 
Program? 


A. As an Individual Student 


1. He should develop friendly contacts, and may 
I say also friendships, which are a little more than 
friendly contacts, with the foreign students who 
offer an exceptional opportunity for a sharing of 
ideals and culture. May J say that this Christian 
student’s part of the program is not primarily in- 
tended to mean only student volunteers and those 
who are planning to go to the foreign field? It 
means every single Christian student. 

2. He should bear his share of the missionary pro- 
gram: to carry the ideals and power of Christianity 
into every area of life throughout the world by 
carrying them into his own life and social rela- 
tions whether in business or in the church, at nome 
or abroad. 

B. As a Member of Society 

1. He should oppose anti-Christian legislation 
such as the section of the Immigration Act which 
discriminates against Asiatics; unequal treaties in 
China; and practices which discriminate against © 
Negroes or other races in this country. 

2. He should actively combat the increasing eco- 
nomic imperialism and exploitation backed by mili- 
tarism in the United States. | 

3. He should recognize that there is a loyalty to- 
humanity and Christian idealism which should — 
always take precedence wherever it comes in con- 
flict with lesser loyalties such as those to state, — 
church, or social class. : 





YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 201 


C. Asa Member of the Church 


1. He should foster the consciousness that the 
church as well as the individual is a member of 
society and as such should give its corporate sup- 
port to the convictions of its members, 

2. He is obligated to take his share in the mission- 
ary program of the church and to help the church 
to an intelligent adaptation of its program to the 
present needs of the world. 

(a) By working in local churches throughout the 
country for a presentation of missions adequate to 
the demands of the present time. 

(b) By enlisting their active support for progres- 
Sive board and missionary policies, which we find 
exhibited in many boards and churches, and which 
we find sadly unsupported by many, many other 
churches. 

(ec) By educating the church in this program, by 
giving: 

(1) A fair and unbiased picture of national cul- 
tures and ambitions. 

(2) A feeling of mutual sharing in the realiza- 
tion of the ideals of humanity. 

(d) By urging foreign students in this country 
to associate with and to become active workers in 
the church. In other words, to begin at once to be 
missionaries from China to America. 


Strupent CoMMISSION ON ForrIGN Mission Program 
OF THE CHURCH 


Newell S. Booth, Boston University School of 
Theology 

John St. John, Union Theological Seminary 

Katherine Dieffendorf, Mount Holyoke College 

Donald McConnell, Union Theological Seminary 

Logan H. Roots, Harvard University 

Dorothy Post, Vassar College 


202 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


Mary Lichliter, Wellesley College 

Ruth Drake, Wellesley College 

George B. Leeder, Princeton University 

Anita Harris, Elmira College 

Martin De Wolfe, Hartford Seminary 

Charles Reinbrecht, Lutheran Theological Seminary, 
Mount Airy, Pa. 

James Bradley, University of Pennsylvania 

Edith Petrie, 3921 5th Avenue, N. W., Washing- 
ton, D. C. 

Virgina Pritchard, Blanksburg, Virginia 

Noel Mayhew, Yale Divinity School 

Leo. V. Barker, Union Theological Seminary 

Rachael Childrey, Cornell University 

Mary J. Harrar, Bucknell University 

J. Levering Evans, Yale Divinity School 

Y. T. Wu, Union Theological Seminary 

Harriett Crutchfield, Vassar College 

Esther West, Columbia University 

Miss Marquis, .Wellesley College 


FINDINGS ON FOREIGN MISSIONS AND 
THE CHURCH 


The conference indorses the report of the Student 
Commission on Foreign Missions as a statement of 
its principles especially concerning the reinterpreta- 
tion of the missionary program, emphasis being © 
placed on the following: 

1. Denominationalism should be absolutely cut 
out of the spirit and method of the Christian enter- 
prise abroad. : 


2. We must strive for more mutuality of giving © 
and receiving not only in mission work but also by — 
means of exchange students, professors and Chris- 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 202 


tian workers. We ask the United States Congress 
to appropriate as much money as they now spend 
per year on R. O. T. C. in colleges and high schools 
for an exchange of students between the United 
States and other nations. 

3. Jesus’ way of life must replace creedal and 
legalistic teachings. 

4. We must separate Christian missions from 
political influence and Western materialism and we 
must stand unqualifiedly opposed to commercial 
exploitation. 

5. The missionary must work in such a way as 
_ to eliminate the need for his leadership as quickly 
as possible. 

6. We must seek friendship with students from 
_ other lands. 


Further the conference makes the following addi- 
tions to this statement of principles in the report: 


1. The missionary enterprise should become more 
responsive to the courage and moral vision of youth 
and not be bound by the lack of vision in the 
churches. 

2. The Mission Boards should be more honest with 
the constituency who are supporting them by ex- 
plaining the policies fully though it forfeits some 
financial support. 

__ 38. We must seek to avoid fostering by our mis- 
sions a narrow nationalism. 

4. The Mission Boards should seek to find a way 
to appoint candidates to country and profession 
early in their educational career. 

5. We must recognize a new frontier other than 
geographical which the evils of new social and eco- 
nomic exploitation have created. 

_ We resolve, in the light of these principles that 
We should undertake the task of the Christian stu- 


204 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


dent in working for this program as outlined in the 
report, as a student, as a member of society, as a 
member of the church. 


(Suggestions offered but not added as amendments. ) 
1. That we substitute for the words “missions” 
and “missionaries” words which have a better con- 
notation, e. g., “American church international 
activities,” “Christian world enterprise abroad.” 

2. That a young person or persons be placed on 
the Mission Boards. 

3. That the Board of Foreign Missions recognize 
the right of Oriental Christians to administer for 
themselves the money raised for Christian work in 
their own country and to direct their own religious 
policies. 

FINDINGS 
COOPERATION OF CHURCHES 


Chairman of Committee, Mr. Nelson 


We favor the unification of all Christian churches. 

To. secure this we suggest the union of all Prot- 
estant denominations. 

As a first step toward this end we suggest the 
unification of young people’s societies—the Chris- 
tian Endeavor, the Epworth League, the Baptist 
Young People’s Union, the Luther League, etc.— 
and that this be done through the Federal Council 
of Churches, if possible. 

We suggest this step toward union unification be 
taken first of all in the young people’s societies of. 
local churches. 

We suggest a unified program of religious edu- 
cation. 

a. A department of religious education in every 
college. 

b. That all Christian colleges and theological 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 205 


schools be made undenominational in their char- 

acter. 

Discussion CoNcERNING FINDINGS ON COOPERATION 
OF CHURCHES 

‘Mr. West, Ohio University: I wonder what kind 
of unification of young people’s organization is 
meant by this? Is it another organization to bring 
about unity of denominations? We already have a 
national young people’s denomination. Is_ this 
Simply a unification of the societies in the churches 
throughout the country, without any overhead na- 
tional machinery? 

Mr. Nelson: The committee felt that the young 
people of this assembly or of the country could not 
logically ask the churches to unite until they were 
willing to unite in their own organization. Since 
we have the Christian Endeavor working in several 
different denominations, we felt that all of these 
young people’s organizations could come together 
under one head. If they wanted to forget their 
names, they could take another. I think that was 
the idea. 

Mr. Wills, Massachusetts Institute of Technology : 
I am from an engineering school. I don’t see why 
we should have a department of religious educa- 
tion. 

Mr. Shock, Purdue: I come from an engineering 
college. I think we have a distinct need for some 
religious education there. For that reason, I feel 
courses in religious education would not be out of 
place in an engineering college. 


206 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


Mr. Schwarz: We also have Bible work, and the 
engineers in the place feel that the time is not any 
loss. All the engineers I have met feel it is really 
good for them. 

Mr. Kill, Toronto: Candidates for the ministry 
of the United Church of Canada may differ on cer- 
tain individual points of doctrine. It is left to the 
conference to decide whether this person is eligible 
for the ministry. The responsibility should be on 
the living church and not on the dead. 

Mr. Leper, Allegheny: I think one small item that 
might be contributed to our thought on this ques- 
tion is the experience of the Society of Friends. I 
think the general opinion of the people here is that 
that group succeeded in emphasizing spiritual life 
and social service in a way that hardly any other © 
group has done. In my study of that group this 
past summer it has become my conviction that one © 
of the things which aided them to do that was the © 
fact they have no statement of theological belief. : 
When you ask to become a member of their society — 
they do not even ask you what you believe. I think, © 
therefore, if we are to have a united church with the 
right emphasis, we should incorporate this first — 
article. 

Miss Evans, Kansas: I think if we are going to — 
have any basis of union at all, it will be on the prin- 
ciple of freedom of the individual to believe as he © 
Sees fit. The reason we have no scientists, to speak — 
of, within the church is because we don’t have this 
freedom of belief. In my own local church, in the 






Bs te ee 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 207 


young people’s department there are several of the 
best workers we have, some of the most respected 
members who don’t conform to the beliefs laid down 
in the discipline of that church. I think we can 
have difference of belief within a unified church 
and maintain a spiritual fellowship. 


THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE 
Chairman of Findings, W. E. Dempster, Harvard 


We suggest that the conference urge the Church 
of Jesus Christ to develop according to the follow- 
ing suggestions: 

1. That the church be based upon an entire free- 
dom of belief. 

2..That the minister may take part in movements 
in which his church cannot function ag a church. 

3. That it conceive a major purpose be to educate 
and to inspire each man to bear his share of the 
social burden. 

4, That it be a distinctly religious organization 
conserving and recreating Spiritual values in man 
by communion with God. 

5. That one united church be substituted for de- 
nominational organizations. 

6. That the local churches provide different types 
of service to minister to different religious beliefs 
and temperaments. 

¢. That as a beginning toward unity we urge the 
young people’s societies, immediately, to join forces 
regardless of denominational lines, preferably under 
the Federal Council of Churches. 


Discussion ConceRNING FINDINGS ON THE CHURCH 
OF THR Fururn 


Mr. Taber, Taylor: The first proposition is based 


t 


208 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


upon the assumption of what we believe is not im- 
portant. When John Wesley revolutionized Eng- 
land, it was because he believed God could do cer- 
tain things. With that power he served England. 
Any person who wants to stir the country to-day 
must have definite belief in some power. 

Mr. Turner, ITilinois: It seems to me this sug- 
gestion is based upon the idea that the individual, 
if he is given adequate training in religious educa- 
tion, can determine his own beliefs much better 
than any larger group can determine a set of beliefs 
which he should accept. It will mean more in solvy- 
ing some of the social problems and a lot of the 
feeble beliefs that somebody hands down to us. 

Mr. Dempster: I feel very deeply about this first 
question. You have convictions about) God and 
about Jesus, and you believe that those convictions 
are the true ones. You believe that very sincerely, 
but you know other students on your campus; you 
meet them every day and you like them; you don’t 
fight with them very much; they have different feel- 
ings about the matter. They are equally as sincere 
as you are. They perhaps would like to believe in 
the kind of God you believe in, but they, for some 
reason or other, find, despite their sincere efforts, 
that they can’t believe that way. These students 
who believe differently than you do—and you know 
there are thousands of them on the campus—could 
worship in the churches if they were allowed to — 
worship there. They do worship in some churches 
which do not require belief for admission. 


¢ 


‘YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH &9 


These propositions that are before you suggest 
that each group that is large enough to have a serv- 
ice of worship of its own, according to its own belief, 
be provided. If you are big enough and broad 
enough to let the students who do not happen to 
believe the same way you do, come in the same 
church you are in, and have their own services of 
worship, or worship as they may, how will you 
weaken the church? There will be plenty of belief. 

Miss Lewis, Taylor: I believe there are some essen- 
tial fundamental principles in Christianity. If 
there are no fundamentals, then there is no Chris- 
tianity; there is just religion. There are funda- 
mental principles upon which Christianity is based. 
if a person does not believe in those, he is not a 
Christian. I believe this resolution should not be 
passed, because Christianity in itself is not entirely 
open to freedom of belief. 


REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON FRIENDLY 
CONSIDERATIONS 


Chairman, Harold C. Hodge, University of Iowa 


The Findings Committee as representative of the 
students and expressing their sentiments take this 
opportunity to acknowledge the efforts of those who 
have made this conference possible. For the promo- 
tion of the conference we are indebted to the peo- 
ple in the gallery, who have given their time and 
labor; to the church boards for their moral and 
financial assistance, and to the scores of people 
whose voluntary services have contributed to the 
success of the conference. 


210 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


We are sincerely thankful to the pastor, Board 
of Trustees, church secretaries, Mr. Gustafson, Mr. 
Johnson, and the members of the First Methodist 
Church of Evanston, to the homes and fraternity 
houses of this city, for their hospitality, to the Con- 
gregational and Baptist Churches of Evanston, to 
Northwestern University and Garrett Biblical 
School, to the Boy Scouts, the Y. W. C: A. and 
Y. M. C. A. for their cooperation. 

We are indebted to members of the Executive 
Committee, the executive secretary and office secre- 
tary, the treasurer of the conference, and the chair- 
men of the committees for carrying out the confer- 
ence purpose and program. 

We thank the organist and song leader, the 
speakers, Stanley High, and Albert Parker Fitch for 
their contribution to the conference program. We 
are grateful to the press for its rather fair evalua- — 
tion and excellent cooperation and admirable con- 
sideration during this conference. Carried. 


REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON A 
CONTINUATION COMMITTEE 


Chairman, Mr. Marvin Harper, Yale 


T will make the report. In the session this morn- 
ing you voted there should be a Continuation Com- 
mittee. You did not specify what sort of a com- 
mittee you wanted, what type of personnel, or what 
type of work they should do, but it seems several 
reasons were in your mind. You had several rea- 
sons in mind when you proposed such a committee. 
Those possibly might be summarized briefly as fol- 
lows: first, that the average American student does 
not know the definition, purpose, or program of the 
Christian Chureh; secondly, that the American col- 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 211 


lege student does not know how the church is work- 
ing or can work with the social, economic, and inter- 
national affairs of our day; thirdly, that certain 
problems have come up which are seen to require 
further study by students. These should be studied 
by a Continuation Committee of this group. 

The committee that was so appointed suggested 
that the Continuation Committee consist of twenty- 
five people; that fifteen of these shall be students; 
six shall be nonstudents engaged in definite church 
work, and four shall be members at large and, of 
course, shall be those definitely interested in the 
church and in the things which this conference has 
been discussing. 

I think the method of choosing these names should 
come before you. First, will be the students who 
have been active in promoting this conference before 
we convened; secondly, students, who from the list 
of conference nominations are eligible. You re- 
member you nominated a group of forty. There 
were two hundred nominations that came in. These 
were studied, and from that number, certain were 
selected for this committee. From our recommenda- 
tions you will see we knew what certain students 
had been doing back on their campuses as well as 
what they were doing on the floor, so we had that 
to judge by. 

Then we selected students who showed activity 
on the various Findings Committees and in confer- 
ence discussion from the floor. The nonstudent 
members are those who have shown great interest 
before and during this conference. 

I want to submit the nominations of this com- 
mittee. As I said, there are fifteen students, six, 
what we might call, church people, those engaged 
in doing church work, and four members at large. 
(See Appendix. ) 


212 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 
CLOSING ADDRESS 
Mr. Howard McCluskey, University of Michigan 


According to the program, I am supposed to give 
some sort of a final touch to the conference, so we 
“can get out of here and not feel that it was a con- 
fused meeting. If you will help me, I will try to 
do the very best I can. 

I am going to talk very briefly in the form of a. 
confession, because I think I can make it the most 
significant by talking to you out of my own personal 
experience. I am still an idealist, in spite of that 
fact I have gotten out in the game and it is begin- 
ning to be appalling. After people get out of this 
‘student period they hit a slump. There is a tend- 
ency to go down. I am not giving this to you folks 
just simply because this is a last-minute appeal, 
but as a sincere, genuine confession, as an interpre- 
tation of what your reaction might be to the thing 
that occurred here this evening. 

I want to analyze the situation. You were here 
together in a most extraordinary situation. A great 
group of you folks came together from all over the 
country to discuss the problem. There has been 
absolutely no protest from the gallery. You have 
had the support and have had the influence of a 
group of people around you, which has made you 
more courageous and more brave than if you were 
in it by yourselves. The psychologists know that a 
person is absolutely different when he is in a group. 
You have been courageous because a great group has 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH = 213 


been here to support you, but just as soon as you 
leave the doors of this conference to-night, you are 
placing yourselves in an entirely new atmosphere, 
where these other distintegrating forces will begin 
to take place. The good Lord help you, and I hope 
he does, but there is some one who is going to go 
down, and some one is going to betray the spirit of 
this conference. Don’t you make any mistake about 
it. | 

You will hardly get out of the church when you 
will be smack up against this thing, and you can- 
not evade it. We are in the midst of life. We are 
in the midst of a situation, where forces about us 
are going to influence us. Whether you like it or 
mot, you are going to be influenced. Life is not a 
vacuum. You simply can’t sit down and hold your 
hands and let the rest of the world go by. You 
either go with the world or against it. Don’t make 
a bit of mistake about that. 

In the face of all that, what hope is there? I 
think there is far more reason for hope than there 
is reason for pessimism. There is bound to be a 
slump when you leave the conference. To my mind, 
the remedy is that we, by some hook or crook, find 
the source of new powers of life. 

After all, what is the secret of life? What is 
the thing that is going to keep us going on and on 
at this high peak of existence? 

I maintain there are powers, there are secret 
powers that we haven’t yet dreamed of, and the new 
psychology is beginning to indicate to us, if we 


214. YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


could develop the technic by which we could dig 
down and get to those tremendous powers which we 
will call, for the want of a better term, spiritual 
powers, we would begin to understand the secret of 
life and begin to get hold of the thing that will keep 
us from slumping. It is coming to me with power- 
ful conviction that there actually are resources at 
our command which we have not yet even tapped. 
There are tremendous reservoirs of strength. There 
are uncharted seas that would literally make us 
supermen if we knew how to get them. I venture to 
say the new race is not going to come in this genera- 
tion, but I bet you the new race is not only going 
to be intellectual giants but spiritual giants. It is 
up to some of us to begin to experiment with life 
and prove to the world and prove to the skeptics, 
and those who have not found the higher way of life 
that it is gloriously possible te combine this pas- 
sionate search for facts and this fine intellectual 
honesty with spiritual fervor, and be cognizant of 
deeper reservoirs of strength. 

Psychologists and some of us in the outside field 
are beginning to find out that perhaps one of the 
finest things you can do is to keep quiet for about 
an hour. You ought to have a period where you 
devote just as much time to spiritual exercise as 
you devote to eating or physical exercise. Did it 
ever occur to you that in perhaps two hundred years 
when all of us are in our mummy cases, the new 
thinkers and the new psychologists and new spir- 
itual masters of the race will be discussing spir- 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 215 


itual nature? It ought to be just as necessary to 
consider the spiritual nature as it is to eat. 

Immediately when you go out of this conference, 
you are going to have that tendency to slump. I 
think the solution for the thing is that we have to 
develop some way, somehow, to get at the secret of 
strength that Christ seemed to have. He got it 
from some place. I don’t care whether you say it is 
conscious of unconscious. I submit that some place 
he got strength that was not in himself. I submit 
to you that some day we will know what that is, and 
I submit to you further that that is just as neces- 
Sary as this extremely scientific and intellectual 
- approach. 

I hope that those of you who have been in the 
conference will go out and be centers of influence, 
that you will give yourself earnestly in serious at- 
tempts to combine these viewpoints. The only 
thing you can do in all honesty is to get down on 
your knees, walk out in the moonlight, or on the 
lake shore; I don’t care what method you use, but 
get next to yourself, and convince yourself that you 
are sold on the Christian program, and you are go- 
ing to try and seek the new levels of energy and find 
out what the true Christian life really means as 
Christ knew it. 


APPENDIX 
EXECUTIVE COMMITTER 


Howard Becker, 1719 Hinman Avenue, sarap 
Til. Northwestern University. © 

George Bell, 825 Ayars Place, Evanston, I. Gar- 
rett Theological Union. 

Dorothy Dyer, care of Dr. 8. A. Knopf, 16 West 95th 
Street, New York. Union Theological Semi- 
nary. 

O. T. Gilmore, 181 West 104th Street, New York 
City. Columbia University. 

Frances P. Greenough, 276 Fifth Avenue, New York 
City. 

Glenn Harding, 306 Plymouth Building, Noe 
University of Chicago. 

Marvin Harper, Emory University, Georgia. 

James Henley, 1900 Duncan Avenue, Chattanooga, 
Tenn. Yale University. 

Stanley High, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York City. 

Dr. L. B. Hillis, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York City. 

Dr. Willard M. Lampe, 77 W. Washington Street, 
Chicago. 

Gilbert Lovell, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York City. 

Twila Lytton, Dean of Women, Lawrence College. 

Serena Pendleton, 281 Fourth Avenue, New York 
City. 

C. M. McConnell, 740 Rush Street, Chicago. 

Mary Ann Randolph, 740 Rush Street, Chicago. 


216 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 217 


Harry W. Seamans, 10 E. Huron Street, Chicago. 

Mrs. H. R. Steele, Lambuth Building, Nashville, 
Tenn. 

Kathleen Stewart, 1037 Marquette Road, Chicago. 
University of Chicago. 

Harry T. Stock, 14 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass. 

Florence C. Tyler, 25 Madison Avenue, New York 
City. 

Marian F. Warner, 317 16th Avenue, Columbus, O. 
Ohio State University. 

Bernard Meland, care of Meland Brothers Music 
Store, Harvey, Ill. University of Chicago. 

Dr. Ralph W. Owen. 

_ Fred Kuebler, Northwestern College. 

_ Raymond E. Wilson, 500 Riverside Drive, New York 
City. Columbia University. 

Ralph Barton, Laury Hall, University of Missouri. 

Elizabeth Conrad, 2017 Hill Street, Ann Arbor, 
Mich. University of Michigan. 

Dorothy Post, Poughkeepsie, N. Y. Vassar College. 

Ann Silver, Salem, Oregon. Willamette University. 

John St. John, 500 Riverside Drive, N. Y. Columbia 
University. 

Cecil Headrick, Winfield, Kan. Southwestern Col- 

lege. 

Robert Weston, University of Denver. 

Agnes Sailer, Vassar College. 

G. E. McCracken, 312 Henry Hall, Princeton Uni- 
versity. 

Irene Gates, 1300 W. 22nd Street, Philadelphia. 

| Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. 


218 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


James Woodruff, 72 Mount Vernon, Boston, Mass. 
Boston University. 

Ralph Wiborg, Garrett Biblical Institute. 

Harold Ehrensperger, Garrett Biblical Institute. 

R. A. Schermerhorn, Garrett Biblical Institute. 

Chairman of Executive Committee, Harry Seamans. 

Vice-Chairman of Executive Committee, Howard P. 
Becker. 

Secretary of Executive Committee, Dorothy Dyer. 

Treasurer, Mary Ann Randolph. 

Committee on Program, Bernard Meland. 

Committee on Finance, George R. Bell. 

Committee on Local Arrangements, Harold Ehrens- 
perger. 

Executive Secretary, R. A. Schermerhorn. 


CONTINUATION COMMITTEE 
Students 

Barton, Ralph F., Laury Hall, University of 
Missouri. 

Childrey, Rachael, 332 Wait Avenue, Ithaca, N. Y. 
Cornell University. 

Ehrensperger, Harold A., Garrett Biblical Insti- 
tute, Evanston. 

Fisher, J. Elliott, 34 North Park Avenue, Oberlin, 
Ohio. 

Headrick, Cecil, 101 Michigan Avenue, Winfield, 
Kan. Southwestern University. 

Henley, James W., Yale Divinity School, New 
Haven, Conn. 


YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 219 


Morgan, Ernest, Yellow Springs, Ohio. Antioch 
College. 

Paik, L. George, 1195 Yale Station, New Haven, 
Conn. 

Sailor, Agnes, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, 
Said ie 

Silver, Ann, Willamette University, Salem, 
Oregon. 

Steiger, Andrew, Elmhurst College, Elmhurst, 
Til. 

Stimson, Edward W., 5960 Enright Street, Saint 
Louis, Mo. Washington University. 

Thurman, Howard, 300 Alexander Street, 
Rochester, N. Y. 

Warner, Marian, 317 Sixteenth Avenue, Colum- 
bus, Ohio. 

Wilkins, John, Boston University School of 
Theology. 


Nonstudent in definite Church Work 


Foster, O. D., Council of Church Boards of Edu- 
cation, Chicago, Temple Building, Chicago, 
Til. 

Greenough, Miss Frances, Board of Education 
of the Northern Baptist Convention, 276 
Fifth Avenue, New York City. 

McConnell, C. M., Board of Home Missions of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, 740 Rush 
Street, Chicago. 

Owens, R. W., Religious Education Board of the 


' 


220 YOUTH LOOKS AT THE CHURCH 


Presbyterian Church, 77 West Washington 
Street, Chicago. 
Stock, H. T., Board of Education of the Congre- 
gational Church, 14 Beacon Street, Boston. 
Tyler, Miss Florence, Secretary, Women’s Chris- 
tian Colleges of the Orient, 25 Madison 
Avenue, New York City. 


Members at Large 

Doan, R. A., 2958 Olentangy Boulevard, Colum- 
bus, Ohio. | 

High, Stanley, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York City. 

McCluskey, Howard, University of Michigan, Ann 
Arbor, Mich. 

Van Kirk, Walter, 105 East 22nd Street, New 
York City. 


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